Monday School: Religious freedom has restrictions

Welcome back to Monday School, your home to the “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!”

Today’s lesson: Should there be restrictions to religious freedom?

I’ll be blunt right from the start: Yes, there should be many restrictions to religious freedom. There are a lot of things in various religious texts that are already outlawed by the laws of modern society, such as slavery. So I can give you examples where law overrules the code of religion, so if deemed necessary, governments should be allowed to restrict religious freedom, especially when that restricts the freedom of others.

Now when I say others, I usually am making a reference to women. There are many nations out there that do not let women do the same things men do because it’s against a certain groups religious rules. Some women are not allowed to drive in some nations, have to cover their face or even hold a job all because they’re not allowed according to their holy scripture. Some nations go out of their way to enforce these rules on women more than others do.

Some religions have been backing off and letting women do things that their religion forbids. Christianity is a good example of this as women are not supposed to hold positions of power, teach or even speak in church according to the bible. But no one ever enforces it, let alone stones people to death for not following it. This is evidence that in some nations, moderam socities are actually starting to out grow their religious beliefs.

To be perfectly honest, I’m starting to really dislike the term ‘religious freedom’, because it regularly seems to see itself as different from general freedom. What other areas of freedom do we persistently categorize like we do religious freedom?

If we ensure freedom, and you’ll still have religious freedom. Yet ‘religious freedom’ cannot come at a cost of freedom, whatever type of freedom that is (often I see one party claim religious freedom in an attempt to take away, or defend having already taken away, the religious freedom of others), or it isn’t about freedom anymore.

Religious freedom shouldn’t be allowed to infringe upon someone else’s right to free speech, or to live for that matter. Nations around the world offer their citizens the right to free speech, and that means they are allow to say what they want without someone getting angry or trying to silence them, but lately we’ve been seeing riots over a cartoon picture of a certain religious figure, or a youtube video enrage people and cause damage and death.

While I am sure people think they have a right to be offended, they do not. The person stating whatever is upsetting everyone has a right to free speech. If you are offended by what that person says, you can exercise your own free speech and protest it, but you can’t respond by killing someone or rioting infront of a newspaper you disagree with. That is where your rights end and you land yourself in jail.

Religions might think they are above everything else, but they are not. They are subject to criticism, and they are also subject to satire. No one should be persecuted or attacked for desmonstrating either. People shouldn’t have the right to shoot anyone, like abortionists in Florida, just because you disagree with what the person is doing. Religious people may disgree with our laws, but that doesn’t give you a license to break other laws.

There is more than one kind of freedom in the books, but there are no freedoms that are more important than the others. This is why there are and should continue to be restrictions on religious freedom. I’m not against people’s freedom to religion, but I also happen to think that people have a right from religion as well.

Not everyone follows the same religion and like myself, there are many who don’t follow religion at all. This is why countries cannot respect religious laws because they would not only conflict with one another but also conflict with those who have none at all. The only rules that should count are the laws of man, made to be neutral to all and treat everyone equally. If that infringes on somoene’s religion, tough shit. Your freedom doesn’t have the right to cancel out mine.

Peter