Another Quick Note: Freedom of Religion

Man, I’m all about the follow-up posts today…

Another conspicuous omission from their list of rights, by our standards, is freedom of religion.

This is on what they would deem the perfectly reasonable grounds that religions tend to include an ethos in the package, and if you can’t tell obnoxious ethoi where to shove it, nothing but trouble ensues.

So if a religion contains lovely doctrinal claims that, say, gay people aren’t really proper people and should be forbidden rights afforded to everyone else, or that women are the cause of vice and legally worth only one-fourth of a man, to pick a couple of examples from a very wide sea of obnoxiousness, or any other such things that are blatantly antithetical to the liberty and ethical equality of all sophonts asserted and guaranteed by the Contract and Charter, the Empire has absolutely no problem in saying to immigrants and converts: “You cannot simultaneously believe both of these things. Pick. One. (And if it’s the other one, get the hell out.)”

(This is perhaps a little unfair to people like – well, like many modern believers who have no difficulty at all performing some mental editing and selective reservation when it comes to the differences between their personal morality and what the doctrines of their religion actually say, but among the many things that the modal Imperial has very little patience for is cognitive dissonance.)

 

One thought on “Another Quick Note: Freedom of Religion

  1. This post doesn’t sound very libertarian.

    the Empire has absolutely no problem in saying to immigrants and converts: “You cannot simultaneously believe both of these things. Pick. One.

    But what about the ethos of “Practical Tolerance”? That is a person believes something you consider odious but still chooses to act in such a manner as to extend civil tolerance to those their religion identifies as odious? Also what does belief have to do with action? How is it cognitive dissonance to extend practical tolerance? Surely in yer private life you don’t go down the street to churches or temples or mosques and start hitting people with a baseball bat just because you don’t like their doctrines on gay marriage? One assumes you just simply say “Well that is all nonsense” and get on with yer life. Do you have cognitive dissonance or are you merely civilized? Well why can’t a religious believe be as well?

    what the doctrines of their religion actually say…

    That kind of begs the question. Who is the interpreter of the doctrines of their religion? Is it you or the believers themselves?

    For example I would as a Catholic (& an Orthodox Jew would agree with me) that Leviticus 20:13 could only be theoretically enforced in the Old Testament Israelite Commonwealth by the public authority which was abrogated with the coming of Christ & the NT. Thus I cannot point to that verse in my Bible and then murder poor Jesse Smolett for his personal proclivities?

    OTOH if the person’s doctrine mandates they can break the civil laws of empire to deny persons deemed odious by their religion rights to life, limb and happiness & other rights protected by the State then by all means don’t give them citizenship. Tell them to bugger off (pun intended).

    Cheers. I brought yer book and I love the firm/Hard Scifi feel. Lovely.

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