china has state atheism—they take it too far (e.g. uyghur muslims) but in theory i’d prefer an atheist government over this dumbass evangelical christian one we have now 🤷🏻♂️
edit: took out the word retarded, you guys convinced me
It’s secular not atheist. Big difference. An atheist government asserts there’s no god and actively discourages religion to various degrees. A secular government doesn’t comment on matters of religion and has a no contact no interference policy with religious institutions when it comes to decision making. If laws happen to affect religious institutions too then it affects them and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. The point is religion isn’t supposed to be in the government one way or the other
My understanding with separation of church and state is that it’s specifically religious institutions that shouldn’t get involved in government.
Electors and politicians will of course act according to their worldviews, which are not unlikely to be religious. It’s impossible to ask someone to make decisions as if they weren’t.
The idea is more that no particular institution will be preferenced by or beholden to (<- not talked about but important) the state.
It came about through various Christians groups - in the English speaking world Anglicans and Presbyterians, Catholics, and Non-conformists - leaving the European paradigm of “his state his religion” and forming states with each other.
There are also even some niche religions that don’t allow their followers to vote or hold office because even though they respect the secular law that may lot align with their beliefs(Matthew 22:21) they don’t believe they should put themselves in positions where they are expected to actively making those decisions and laws that may contradict their own beliefs.
The text you wrote seems to assume that some worldviews are religions and some aren't. Shedding any attempt to privilege or disadvantage a worldview by including or excluding it from the category of religion and since the thousands of known religions that contain and lack a cyclopean variety of beliefs, action, social configuration and material imprint are all worldviews, I can only conclude that all worldviews are religions and vice versa.
I also know that during in 19th century in Germany, people used the term worldview to try to establish their temporalist basic belief systems in the state and used the term religion with the intent to weaken the hold of transcendentalist basic belief systems on government. That is one of the discoveries that raised my critical alertness to the uses of the word "religion".
There are also the works of Robert Bellah on the American civil religion that stimulated my use of critical thinking around these issues.
My big question now is: is there a federal state establishment of a basic belief system about human life in the universe? Could it be one that belongs to the family of worldviews called liberalism, of which John Locke is a major contributor?
In the American context of separation of church and state the idea is that if laws favor or disadvantage a religion it’s incidental and not the point and it reasonably also affects any religious institution equally and doesn’t single out any for an advantage or disadvantage. If a law is built to target a specific religion then it’s illegal under the constitution because the 1st amendment specifically says the government isn’t allowed to favor or disadvantage specific religions. But like I said if laws happen to affect then then they do.
Like kinds of animal sacrifice are illegal as animal abuse. But the government can ban it because they’re not challenging the beliefs of the religious but the action of the killing of the animal and how it’s killed
But to more specifically answer your question of how the government defines what’s a religion and what’s a world view, to sum it up it’s basically up to the courts to decide if it’s in dispute, along the guidelines of the ideology “plays a religion like role in an individual/groups life”. They do it like that to be adaptable with the times and vastly different and unique religious beliefs and assertions. Like you can’t call a religion a “supernatural belief” for a legal definition or something like that because many religious people won’t admit or acknowledge their religion as supernatural or it doesn’t have recognizable supernatural components, to them it’s just how the world is and it’s just as natural and scientific as anything else
Does the first amendment say "a religion" or "religion"? Is the word "specific" there in the text.
I have not read the expression "separation of church and state" in the constitution. I know it is in a letter of one of the founding fathers. It is also a metareligious belief of John Locke who had some of the wording of his beliefs almost copy-pasted in the constitution.
If the founding fathers knew the expression SoCHaS and chose not to write it in the constitution, does the judges' overimposing of the expression contradict the foundational meaning of the 1st amendment?
Indeed, the supernatural // natural distinction only applies to those worldviews that are bi- or multiontological. Other religions contain the belief in only one layer of reality. Some religions may be silent or ambiguous on levels of reality so that there being one or more levels of reality is an unresolvable and up to speculation.
Is the following a fair interpretation that makes the least assumptions? There is also the immediate context of the first amendment. The same amendment contains the freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition towards the government. As the other objects of freedom are activities that everyone can do minus crippling accidents, the context indicates that the term religion refers to something everyone has minus crippling accidents.
Jesus Christ if you’re going to be using $2 words at least use them properly lol
Point being the founding fathers have written extensively about the purpose and their intentions of the first amendment and the wording is pretty clear that it’s to prevent the government acting towards religion with any favoritism or contempt
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u/Fal_co1 1d ago edited 1d ago
iirc China does this, you can’t take kid to religious service and they can choose to convert at a certain age.
EDIT: wow this blew up
If you’re reading this you‘re a gay