One of the things my mother taught me never to talk about
with my barber is religion; however, I will have to find solace in the fact that you are not my barber. However, in my opinion, the corrupt #Supreme Court of
the United States (SCOTUS) #“Hobby Lobby” decision has forced me to address
this sensitive subject. Religion is something unique to everyone, even those of
us who call themselves Christians, Jews, or Muslims. If you do not believe this,
ask a religious person, any religious person regardless of claimed church
affiliation, to describe “their” heaven or their hell. Each description will be
fashioned to fit that persons desires or interpretations of the most evil of
all things, which are personal therefore unique. Of course, some atheists are
immune from the dictates of religion except when they, for example, label themselves
as Jewish atheist—obviously; a person cannot be such a thing.
Religion is very real. Humankind has fabricated religion around
an ill-defined sense we all have of one or more superior beings. Different religions
feel comfortable anthropomorphizing that spirit; others describe it only as an omnipresent,
powerful spirit. Nevertheless, the sense of a superior being is like the taste
of salt or the sense of hunger; we recognize it and allow it to guide us, but
are not able to explain precisely why we have such a sense. We can give senses
human attributes and even attribute emotions to them: the sense of hunger as
evil the sense of affection is good.
Then the United States happened; the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution cleverly created a unique
form of governance around built around secular laws. In a sense, they endorsed existing
religious concepts of humankind to gain acceptance of these documents but were
careful not to allow any religion to rule over another; they cleverly excluded
religion dogma and doctrine from government. They created for the first time in
the human history a government not based on hierarchy but one that centers on individual
rights: one-man one-vote. At the same time, they made provisions for the innate
peck order or hierarchy dominance by establishing the form of government they
did: a House of Representatives for the people, a Congress for the economic elite,
the Supreme Court for secular, and not “religious law”. We glibly, sometimes flippantly,
describe this as “checks and balance”. When you think about it, the fusion of both
religion propensities and biological innate propensities into our lives was truly
a remarkable achievement. What is also obvious is that this created an
extremely delicate balance; one false move and the delicate balance will disappear
and we will return to the caliphate world; God picks the leader; whatever that
means.
However, tragically, SCOTUS
has now upset that balance. The bigger tragedy is that many, many people
endorsed what they have done as the correct thing to do. These misguided
approvals centers around one thing SCOTUS has done; the blatant corruption of
the definition of religious freedom.
Religious freedom means anyone in the United States is free
to worship the way the wish. Of course, there are constraints; they cannot do
harm to others such disturb them with loud music, harm people such as nail them
to a cross, or use cruel and unusual punishment for sins with the term ‘sins’
meaning anything some guy in a church decides is a sin. For example, they can
not cut off a persons head or stone them to death for adultery, or chop off a
hand for thievery but they can excommunicate them from their church, not allow
women to become church leaders, etc. The
most important thing is that they cannot force anyone to follow a specific religious
dogma; religion has to be voluntary: that is what freedom of religion means.
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