@SCOTUSblog
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Atheism is a religious belief. I'm not sure why that's controversial.
If atheist is a religious belief, then abstinence is a type of sexual intercourse.
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@Intercourse said:
Can Muslims refuse to pay for insurance that covers any medication that was derived from pigs of shellfish (that is a LOT of them).
Of course not, they're not considered a branch of Christianity so these loopholes don't apply to them. ;)
@Intercourse said:
Our laws are not a la carte. You do not get to pick and choose because you have philosophical or ideological differences with them.
I agree here, on its face, it's bull that they can dodge a law through a religion loophole. However, I am against the law as it is currently written anyway, and not for even remotely religious reasons. So I'd agree with the Republicans except their reasons for being against healthcare are asinine and their attempt to whittle away at it through these lunatic religious exemptions and other bullshit just pisses me off.So I don't know where that leaves me. As I said above, I believe there should be a mandatory amount of healthcare provided for CITIZENS of the US. But not by forcing us to pay private for-profit insurance companies (ie, line some CEOs' pockets).
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@Intercourse said:
@boomzilla said:
Atheism is a religious belief. I'm not sure why that's controversial.
If atheist is a religious belief, then abstinence is a type of sexual intercourse.If abstinence is a type of sexual intercourse, then bald is a hair color.
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These are all equally and stupidly valid analogies given the original premise.
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I've seen it written that a lot of the people that say "Atheism is a religious belief" simply can't fathom that someone could function without having faith in something.
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Of course not, they're not considered a branch of Christianity so these loopholes don't apply to them.
This is a Christian nation! Founded largely by non-Christians, and most of the Christian laws are not American laws, and the original pledge of allegiance did not have any religious reference in it (though written by a pastor...). But still, a Christian nation. ;)
So I don't know where that leaves me. As I said above, I believe there should be a mandatory amount of healthcare provided for CITIZENS of the US. But not by forcing us to pay private for-profit insurance companies (ie, line some CEOs' pockets).
Agreed, 100%. (My apologies to @codinghorror. I know the preceding reply added nothing to the conversation. Hopefully he will forgive my minor transgression as I use this wonder of infinite scrolling.)
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And it is another pointless topic for arguing. The "can't fathom" part means you're not going to randomly happen to be the person that solved it for them.
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I've seen it written that a lot of the people that say "Atheism is a religious belief" simply can't fathom that someone could function without having faith in something.
I have faith in humanity because I know there is a statistically insignificant number of @SpectateSwamp.
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@Intercourse said:
original pledge of allegiance did not have any religious reference in it
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7500.html has a lengthy detailed take on the role of Christianity in the early American years at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. The book's Introduction on that site is a decent summary. I'm not sure towards which side if any that it might be biased. But regardless of bias, it definitely was not without a fight that the constitution and first amendments gave Americans freedom of religion and freedom from Christianity.
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I have faith in humanity because I know there is a statistically insignificant number of @SpectateSwamp.
That was satire? I mean, it has to be. Right? It has to be satire.
I don't think it was satire... I have fired SE's for doing better work than that.
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Americans freedom of religion and freedom from Christianity
I should note however, that some states have outright ignored all of this and actually created laws banning Atheists from holding government positions. Some of those laws still have not been struck down.
Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1:
Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.Maryland, Article 37:
That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.Mississippi, Article 14, Section 265:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8:
The following persons shall be disqualified for office:
First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2:
No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.Texas, Article 1, Section 4:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
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Oh trust me, I am well aware of those archaic laws. Well, archaic only in the spirit of the law. Several of them are actually quite recently passed.
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laws banning Atheists from holding government positions
And plenty of Christians are still claiming persecution :) Which makes me wonder if they qualify as having enough neurological capacity to be considered a human life or can we just abort them?
Filed Under: Daisy-chain quoting myself?
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@Intercourse said:
This is a Christian nation! Founded largely by non-Christians, and most of the Christian laws are not American laws, and the original pledge of allegiance did not have any religious reference in it (though written by a pastor...). But still, a Christian nation.
My favorite response is to trot out the Treaty of Tripoli:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion...
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@Intercourse said:
I do not agree with a lot of the ACA, but as of right now it is the law of the land.
Exactly. The only one who can change it now is the president himself.
@Intercourse said:
Citizens United is where all of this shit started.
No relation at all. In fact, it doesn't even have anything to do with corporate personhood. Citizens United undid some of the fuckupery that was McCain-Feingold... i.e. the ruling class making it a crime to criticize them during election season. The government literally argued that a single sentence about a politician would be sufficient to ban a book.
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I have faith in humanity because I know there is a statistically insignificant number of @SpectateSwamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEVSyWv9p9k
He logs all of his Google searches to a txt file. Look through some of them. Some that I noticed:
"knowing next to nothing" and "illegal dinosaurs"
I have searched for a lot of strange things over the years, but I cannot fathom how any person would come to Google "illegal dinosaurs".
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@Intercourse said:
but I cannot fathom how any person would come to Google "illegal dinosaurs".
Close-minded imbecile!
Filed Under: He watched Jurassic Park while stoned.
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My favorite response is to trot out the Treaty of Tripoli:
Likewise. My fundamentalist MIL nearly shat herself when I showed it to her.
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@Intercourse said:
trot out the Treaty of Tripoli:
Clearly John Adams just needed to wait 200 years for the WMDs of Bin Laden
Filed Under: the sarcasm, and with it an incorrect historical reference, drips
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@Intercourse said:
My fundamentalist MIL nearly shat herself when I showed it to her.
This topic is going to explode some heads in the morning. I expect some very angry rebuttals.edit - that quoted line is... bad... out of context.... I suppose the question is, did you enjoy when she shat herself when you showed it to her?
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No relation at all.
Really? I thought you claimed to be a lawyer? I was no fan of McCain-Feingold, but Citizens United is the ruling that has become infamous for the "citizens are people" byline in the news. If corporations are people, then they can argue that they have religious freedom, etc. If a corporation is just a financial and administrative entity, then it cannot have a religion.
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Now the Beckett Fund and other scholars are arguing that the ACA’s exemption for religious non-profits is too narrow and that all corporations, profit and non-profit alike, should be able to claim an exemption from the contraception mandate because, according to the Citizens United case, corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals. ... For example, the majority in the Hobby Lobby case wrote that: “Because Hobby Lobby and Mardel express themselves for religious purposes, the First Amendment logic of Citizens United, where the Supreme Court has recognized a First Amendment right of for-profit corporations to express themselves for political purposes, applies as well.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115751/obamacares-contraception-mandate-will-be-challenged-suprem (clearly a liberal rag, since it's media and on the internet, amirite)
The majority of the Supreme Court appears to agree with you @Intercourse
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@Intercourse said:
I thought you claimed to be a lawyer?
That's Doctor Lawyer Esquire, M.D. to you.
@Intercourse said:
Citizens United is the ruling that has become infamous for the "citizens are people" byline in the news. If corporations are people, then they can argue that they have religious freedom, etc. If a corporation is just a financial and administrative entity, then it cannot have a religion.
I mean, it certainly raised awareness to the general public about corporate personhood, but it was really tangential. You can't deny someone's rights just because they're a member of a group.
Oh no, no, you're Google Inc., and these buildings are owned by a fictitious corporate entity. The fourth amendment only applies to people, so we're just gonna come inside and look on all those servers there.
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I'll be damned too, everyone had me thinking Hobby Lobby was only out to avoid paying for the Day After Pill, what with all their abortion rhetoric.
Hobby Lobby offers 16 of the 20 required contraceptive medications - the ones they have problems with, as @boomzilla stated, are akin to abortion - morning after pill, week after pill, etc
TRWTF is that people are calling abortion methods (i.e. stuff used after, not during or before, sex) "contraception," making those unfamiliar with the case thinking they're refusing condoms, caps, coils, the pill and the withdrawal and rhythm methods.
It's particular pills that basically induce an abortion (not all contraception as often portrayed).
Hobby Lobby also did not want to cover a specific contraceptive intrauterine device, or IUD, based on nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors deceit, because you can't know whether the IUD did its work before or after a sperm touched an egg and more likely just prevented that egg from implanting into the uterus. I guess not even all the right-wingers agree with this one, since they conveniently avoided mentioning it in every right-wing FUD article I saw and just wanted to label everything as "abortion" so that you have to agree with them or else you want to murder babies.
@boomzilla said:It's a fact that human life begins with the embryo, which is what people mean by "at conception."
Actually the above should be a quote more aimed at Mott555 and PJH not boomzilla, but he happened to summarize their views in his own post. Re-reading Mott & PJH's posts at the start of this topic, they also fell for the "omg they're all abortion pills not contraceptives" articles. Oh, here's the one I was looking for...
@PJH said:That's what, in the eyes of some people, make it abortion, as opposed to contraception.
The clue's in the name - "contra-ception"
Once conception has been achieved - i.e. fertilization, contraception (unless you're redefining the words) is useless.
Orly?It depends on your definition of pregnancy. Most doctors agree that a pregnancy occurs when the fertilized egg attaches to the uterus [this is what makes the IUD a contraceptive, for those of you still stuck on the "they want to force them to pay for abortions" thing], but many people, including Hobby Lobby executives, think it happens when the egg becomes fertilized by the sperm.
yes, this quote is clearly biased, but it goes to show that pretty much anyone can claim that all the scientists/doctors are on their side if they cover their eyes just right Yep, it's a fact, science clearly agrees... oh wait no it doesn't, just the scientists you choose to believe because they agree with you, or word it in a way as to be too ambiguous to argue. I suppose you can have life begin before pregnancy, right?! If that's true, then the IUD can just help that life right on out the hole and the doctors that believe so can help it grow up.Note to self: take the time to research the actual arguments presented rather than taking them at face value from random news articles or forum posts.
edit - I still don't think Hobby Lobby, or ANY business should have to cover this shit. The government should stay out of it or cover it themselves (without involving for-profit insurance companies). But if Hobby Lobby doesn't want to cover it, their employees can go find somewhere to work that will, or pay for it themselves, or buy their own insurance plans.
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Finding all those quotes was one serious pain in the ass here using the infini-scrolling crap.
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It's okay, it was just a poor poke at the general lack of belief in science by the right-wing public
Eh...what?
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@Intercourse said:
I would have remembered that, but the lack of pagination here makes topics rather difficult to read all the way through.
I don't understand this. Just keep scrolling.
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@Intercourse said:
Did you get that from Hannity's website?
Reading isn't your strong suit, eh?
@Intercourse said:
So, it really was not Democrats who voted this way, it was wealthy southern landowners...who are now predominately fucking Republican.
I will certainly agree that the racism of the Democrats has evolved over time.
@Intercourse said:
I am extremely centrist.
This usually means you aren't smart enough to make up your mind.
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@Intercourse said:
...stupid fucking decision by the SCOTUS:
I think I was right before.
@Intercourse said:
Our laws are not a la carte
@Intercourse said:I do not agree with a lot of the ACA, but as of right now it is the law of the land.
So, you could point to the part of the legislation that Hobby Lobby challenged? That's a trick question, of course you can't, because they didn't. They challenged a bit of regulation created by HHS that has been ruled to violate RRFA, another of those non-a la carte laws.
@Intercourse said:
Citizens United is where all of this shit started. If corporations are people, then perhaps corporate charters should only last as long as the average human lifespan?
What's the problem with Citizens United? People who rail against it never seem to think very hard about it. Why should people lose rights when they decide to do things as a group?
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@Intercourse said:
If atheist is a religious belief, then abstinence is a type of sexual intercourse.
You're on a roll here. Please explain how atheism isn't a religious belief. Is it not a belief about God?
I've seen it written that a lot of the people that say "Atheism is a religious belief" simply can't fathom that someone could function without having faith in something.
I'm saying that the belief that there is no God is obviously faith. Just as God's existence is not provable, neither is his non-existence. You are free, of course, to attach whatever judgment values you like, but to say it's not a religious belief deserves a TDEMSYR.
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I agree here, on its face, it's bull that they can dodge a law through a religion loophole.
It's simply obeying a previous law from Congress. Signed by Bill Clinton and sponsored by right wingnuts like Chuck Schumer. Of course, there are other protections to religion built into the Constitution. Saying stuff like "it's bull" just makes you look clueless. I guess that's fun sometimes.
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simply can't fathom that someone could function without having faith in something.
I have faith in humanity's ability to grow, and to find out how our universe works.Is it not a belief about God?
I don't have faith in a magical fantasy space being. There is no book of atheism. I don't have rules or traditions derived from it. I don't have regular congregations with other atheists where we purport to celebrate our atheism.the belief that there is no God is obviously faith.
No, that's wrong. I don't have faith that there is no god.
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Hobby Lobby also did not want to cover a specific contraceptive intrauterine device, or IUD, based on nothing but a bunch of smoke and mirrors deceit, because you can't know whether the IUD did its work before or after a sperm touched an egg and more likely just prevented that egg from implanting into the uterus
You realize that you just destroyed your original argument, right? The IUD works in different ways.
ep, it's a fact, science clearly agrees... oh wait no it doesn't, just the scientists you choose to believe because they agree with you, or word it in a way as to be too ambiguous to argue.
Yes, so their belief is very much scientifically plausible, and you have to change the terms from human life to pregnancy to try to argue against it. At which point we're really debating values, which aren't science at all, but philosophy or religion.
You may disagree with those values, but it shouldn't be that difficult to see that forcing someone to be complicit in something they consider an atrocity is something that shouldn't be done lightly. Let's also note that if this stuff had actually been in the legislation (and Obama hadn't promised to write an executive order forbidding exactly this stuff) it probably wouldn't have been passed. That's not a legal argument, of course, but I think it does speak to the shitstain character of those involved.
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I don't have faith in a magical fantasy space being. There is no book of atheism. I don't have rules or traditions derived from it. I don't have regular congregations with other atheists where we purport to celebrate our atheism.
That doesn't matter. Lots of people who believe in God don't believe things that other organized religions believe. It doesn't make it not a religious belief.
No, that's wrong. I don't have faith that there is no god.
So, you sound more like an agnostic (again, a religious belief, if an uncertain one).
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Lots of people who believe in God don't believe things that other organized religions believe. It doesn't make it not a religious belief.
It does. If you stopped going to church at some point, you're certainly less religious than before. At what point in that scale do you stop pretending you're religious?
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It does. If you stopped going to church at some point, you're certainly less religious than before. At what point in that scale do you stop pretending you're religious?
"Being religious" here is referring to active worship, it seems. If you still believe in God, that's still a religious belief. As opposed to, uh, what you think the speed of light is in a vacuum.
Consider the common (western) case: Christianity. They believe only the Christian God exists, and all the others don't. Is their disbelief in the other Gods not religious? I don't see how you could reconcile that with disbelief in all gods not being a religious belief.
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I don't see how you could reconcile that with disbelief in all gods not being a religious belief.
true/false/null
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I will certainly agree that the racism of the Democrats has evolved over time.
You might want to study your American history. The majority of the Democrat racists abandoned the party in the 50s/60s over the Democratic Party's support of the Civil Rights Acts. They fled to the Republican party and in the South are now the backbone of what makes the South a Republican voting section of the country.
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Yes, so their belief is very much scientifically plausible, and you have to change the terms from human life to pregnancy to try to argue against it.
I did? The DOCTORS defined the terms, not me. You can take it up with them. You're the ones redefining it.
Or try the dictionary:
con·cep·tion [kuhn-sep-shuhn]
noun
1.
the act of conceiving; the state of being conceived.
2.
fertilization; inception of pregnancy.
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You might want to study your American history. The majority of the Democrat racists abandoned the party in the 50s/60s over the Democratic Party's support of the Civil Rights Acts. They fled to the Republican party and in the South are now the backbone of what makes the South a Republican voting section of the country.
This is less true than you think it is. There were a few who crossed over, sure, but then you had lots like Bill Clinton's racist hero, William Fullbright. It doesn't stop your popular misconception, of course.
I did? The DOCTORS defined the terms, not me. You can take it up with them. You're the ones redefining it.
Yes, the terms. The important term here being human life, which starts when the embryo forms. This isn't controversial. What's controversial is the value we place on it when that happens. You can go all pedantic dickweed about the term pregnancy and the termination of such, but the heart of the issue is the value of human life at different stages.
I kinda hate to shut down on pedantic dickweedery on this site, but we should at least recognize when it's being used to obfuscate and mislead and not funny.
Filed Under: War on women
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Yes, the terms. The important term here being human life
So exactly what you're saying here is that you're defining terms to fit what you want to believe and going all pedantic dickweedery on anyone who would choose to bring any amount of science into it.
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This is less true than you think it is. There were a few who crossed over, sure, but then you had lots like Bill Clinton's racist hero, William Fullbright. It doesn't stop your popular misconception, of course.
My misconception and apparently the misconception of most books written on the subject. But go ahead, argue them all.
By the way...
James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from 1945 to 1975.
Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist who supported the creation of the United Nations and the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was also a segregationist who signed the Southern Manifesto.
So basically Fulbright was a major democratic player well before the falling out that I referred to, and didn't switch parties at the tail of his political career because he was more against other ideals of the Repulican party than he was for his own racist views. That's your rebuttal? :) good deal.Just because I said "majority" left the party doesn't mean 100% of every one of them.
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So exactly what you're saying here is that you're defining terms to fit what you want to believe and going all pedantic dickweedery on anyone who would choose to bring any amount of science into it.
Yes, except that's exactly not what I'm doing? What exactly have I done to "deny" science? My point is that you're bringing up irrelevant things and changing the subject from the topic at hand.
For instance. You pointed out the IUDs can operate in several ways to prevent pregnancy. That doesn't contradict that they can prevent an embryo from implanting, which is to say, it can destroy human life, which is contrary to the religious beliefs of the plaintiffs.
Congress has spoken to say that if they're going to do that, they need to do it in the least intrusive way possible. Since there already exists a less intrusive way to accomplish this goal, the regulation is obviously unlawful. Note that this is an issue of Congress limiting the power of the Federal government to do certain things.
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Just because I said "majority" left the party doesn't mean 100% of every one of them.
So who were all these racists who became Republicans, then? The reality is that the South was becoming more Republican over time, not as a big shift due to civil rights, which mostly Republicans voted for, anyways.
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Even the standby of electing different parties to control different sections of the government to force a stalemate on major topics is starting to get annoying.
That is a helpful side effect. If it ever became common knowledge that we really only have one party here, the consequences would be difficult to predict, so it's better not to allow that to happen.
I've seen it written that a lot of the people that say "Atheism is a religious belief" simply can't fathom that someone could function without having faith in something.
They're not entirely wrong. How many atheists are also progressives? Progressivism is as much a belief system as any religion. Instead of believing in God, progressives believe in Progress (obviously) and Equality (also Science, but that's another discussion).@Intercourse said:
I was no fan of McCain-Feingold
It still amazes me that McCain-Feingold wasn't overturned entirely. If political speech isn't protected, how is free speech even relevant any more?
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That doesn't contradict that they can prevent an embryo from implanting, which is to say, it can destroy human life, which is contrary to the religious beliefs of the plaintiffs.
My problem lies not with what we have now established to be special religious terminology for the beginning of "human life". If you want your own special phrase with its own special meaning, more power to you. But don't then re-define "abortion" to fit yourselves.
a·bor·tion
əˈbôrSHən
noun
1.
the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy,The religious right should come up with their own phrase for terminating "human life" instead of re-defining the term abortion. I know I know, you need the word abortion, that's where all the pre-existing negative connotations are :( and the headlines just won't incite enough irrational anger without that.
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You're on a roll here. Please explain how atheism isn't a religious belief. Is it not a belief about God?
Are you retarded? Or are you just being deliberately obtuse? Atheism is not a belief about God, it is a lack of belief in God. Only idiots think that the lack of something, is that exact thing. The lack of air is not a vacuum, it is air. The lack of light is not dark, it is light! The lack of money is not poverty, it is wealth!
Absolutely idiotic.
I'm saying that the belief that there is no God is obviously faith. Just as God's existence is not provable, neither is his non-existence. You are free, of course, to attach whatever judgment values you like, but to say it's not a religious belief deserves a TDEMSYR.
Yet another fallacious assumption. Just because you cannot prove a negative, does not make that negative a belief structure. You cannot prove that there is not a tiny teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars, and you should not. Yet by your litmus test, you only have faith as to the correctness of that belief.
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a big shift due to civil rights, which mostly Republicans voted for, anyways.
Fascinating. You just make 'em up as you go along eh? There were more votes supporting civil rights by Democrats than Republicans, and exceedingly so in the North. And that's despite the vote happened before the split in the democratic party that saw a large number of the Southern Democrate anti-Civil Rights voters leave the party, because as I noted, it was a big reason for them leaving.Also note that Northern Democrats, which is your current liberal democrat strong hold by far exceeded the Republicans in support of the Civil Rights Act, in both % and total count.
Civil rights act Vote counts:
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%)The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)So who were all these racists who became Republicans, then?
Uh - Senator Strom Thurmond very famously switched parties specifically because of his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I'm not going to bother looking up more, because clearly you don't even have a clue what you're rambling on about.
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@Intercourse said:
Atheism is not a belief about God, it is a lack of belief in God.
You're thinking of agnosticism. Atheism is the belief that there is no god.
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Atheism is the belief that there is no god.
ATHEISM
a : a disbelief in the existence of deityThe difference is in "disbelief" versus "belief".
You do not need faith to not believe in things even though it takes faith to believe in them.
