Believing in what you wish should be allowed, even
if you have no evidence to provide to other people and even if what you
believe is viewed by others as crazy and/or irrational. There are
limits. When
your beliefs harm others or interfere with their rights, where
unsubstantiated belief in something has turned into making people
behave a certain way arbitrarily. This is wrong. The
Separation of Church and state was not created as a put-down to
religion. It was an acknowledgment that government has no
business regulating religion for it's peoples. This leaves
government with two options, raise up all religions equally, or exclude
all religions from government. Given the literal impossibility of
the first option, government has no choice but to exclude all religions.
This does not mean saying that they are wrong. It
means refusing to take sides in any religious dispute, and making sure
that religious freedom includes the right to say no to religion.
It also means that our government institutions (including public
schools) take a hands-off approach to religion. Teaching religion
in anything but an academic context is not the job of the public school
system. Religion belongs to those who are religious. This
is not supporting Atheism, as some have claimed. Atheists do not
believe in God, but government is not pandering to Atheism by keeping
religion out of public schools any more than it is taking a stance
against Amtrak by not allowing the posting of company ads in government
buildings. Basically, religious freedom should work both
ways. The people should be free to practice (or NOT practice)
whatever religion they choose without persecution by others.
The following items are examples of events that move government beyond
the role of
arbiter of rights and into the role of religious endorsement.
The United Nations - The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution
making it illegal [meaning a Human Rights violation] to criticize
religion. This motion was brought before the UN as a non-binding
resolution in 2008 by a group of Muslim states saying that they were
worried about the detrimental effects from having their religion
defamed. This is a declaration that standard defamation laws are
not adequate to protect religion from those who would persecute
it. This resolution was brought in the wake of several
publications that were critical of the Muslim faith, most notably the
Dutch cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb on his
head.
This is very important. The supporters of this
resolution are saying that not only does a cartoon fall under the
heading of "defamation" of the Muslim faith, but that existing
anti-defamation laws are not adequate for the prosecution of this
"crime" Anyone who believes this is an enemy of free speech, an
enemy of religious freedom and an enemy of human rights. The
Human Rights Council has managed to out-do it's predecessor; the Human
Rights Commission and become what it was created to fight against.