exempt from vaccines for religious reasons

[Cego_Colher]

I feel like this might be an odd thread to start. I also don't know if this should go here, but medicine is a science, but it's about religion. (eh, I never know where anything should go.) Anyway, I am a student service intern at my college. I do whatever needs doing for student services. One day last month I was organizing health forms (and other student forms) and I ran into one that said she was exempt from the vaccines required to go to school for religious reasons.
I am not sure what I wanted to say about it, but I wanted to say words.
Aren't vaccines supposed to protect the person who got it and other people? yeah, I got the vaccine to protect me, but what if the virus evolves into a strain my immune system can't handle? that can happen, yes, no? well, it wouldn't be that likely. I know I'm bound to run into people not vaccinated on the street, but it is a little different when you are living on campus with them.
I'm not worried about it or anything like that. so, you don't need to tell me I'm not going to catch a deadly disease, that could have been prevented if that one person got her shots. I guess, I just wanted to hear thoughts on the matter. If anyone has any. If not, oh, well.

[Minimalist]

It's a fine example of the kowtowing to stupidity everytime someone plays the religion card.

I would agree that if someone does not want to take a vaccine (for any reason) that they should have that right.
They also forfeit the right to attend an institution which requires said vaccination.

[Anomalocaris]

It's a fine example of the kowtowing to stupidity everytime someone plays the religion card.

I would agree that if someone does not want to take a vaccine (for any reason) that they should have that right.
They also forfeit the right to attend an institution which requires said vaccination.

They should also pay a medical insurance premiums commensurate with their own increased risk, and be subject to compulsory preventive quarantine with judicial penalties for evasion commensurate with the increased risk they pose to the public should the disease whose vaccine they refuse be transmittable from human to human.

[Intimae_Hasta]

Yes, what Chuck said

[Minimalist]

They should also pay a medical insurance premiums commensurate with their own increased risk

Idiots like that should be praying to their silly god to cure them instead of wasting the time of doctors.

[DiRNiS]

They should also pay a medical insurance premiums commensurate with their own increased risk

Idiots like that should be praying to their silly god to cure them instead of wasting the time of doctors.

They can "pray" all they want for their invisible friend to cure them, but I have a problem when they deny children the right to real medicine because of their bullshit religious beliefs. Children who don't know any better have to suffer when they are not seen by a real doctor because their parents thought some sky fairy would "miraculously" cure them.

[Minimalist]

Children who don't know any better have to suffer

Most of their children will grow up to be as stupid as their parents. Natural selection needs to cull the herd.

[Anomalocaris]

Children who don't know any better have to suffer

Most of their children will grow up to be as stupid as their parents. Natural selection needs to cull the herd.

The Atheists need to have more children. Evolution is far from driven solely by natural selection.

[Cego_Colher]

The Atheists need to have more children. Evolution is far from driven solely by natural selection.

yeah, but most of us know what birth control is... more of them think: teach abstinence only, and some of them might still think that they shouldn't ever use BC, even after they get married.

[Anomalocaris]

Then sterilize fundies.

Religion also undergo evolution by natural selection for traits which best enable it to grow and fester in a population. Since most people with religious beliefs inherits their parent's religious beliefs, the religions that incited the largest population increase will crowd out those which discourage excessive breeding. So after a whole the religious landscape settles down to a few large religions that tend to all advocate wanton population increase. Religions which in their strictures or in their rituals did not encourage wanton procreation tend not to get very very large and eventually sputter. It is no surprise that the Catholic church impose such strictures on birthcontrol, nor Christian looking at Muslim birthrates with such trepidation. In the very depth of their minds, they know its not about theology, but about secular birthrate.

When the Hebrews imagined their tyrant in the sky told them to go forth and multiply, they are but reflecting their own knowledge of this up onto their deity. When the carrying capacity of the land or the whole planet is reached, and religious people still breed like crazy in order to hog larger portion of the now fixed pie, people who plan their family sizes responsibly in an otherwise enlightened manner is effectively subsidizing, through their own restraint, the wanton behavior of those who still breed like rats.