There is no such thing as Freedom of Religion

Correlation/causation fallacy. Is it your intent to use every fallacy at least once in a single thread? Simply because these rates are rising faster, it does nothing to demonstrate whether or not the individual was raised within a religious setting initially or not.

I would like to see a citing of this from the NT perspective, since the idea of the Christ coming is that we no longer hold to the OT punishments. Mind you, I am not saying that there are not those claiming Christian as their religion who call for OT punishments. I am simply saying that such belief runs contrary to actual NT principles.

 

Your grasp of basic human nature is lacking.

 

You could not answer any of those questions honestly so you pull out your own strawman fallacy!

Seriously?

Explain exactly how jealously punishing both the worshippers of other deities and their descendents does not negate freedom of religion?

 

Wait? What? How is noting that you are using a strawman and pointing out the reasons they are a strawman, a strawman in and of itself?

Yes, you have done a wonderful job so far of showing where such a freedom does not exists within the context of a given religion. That still does does nothing to show that the concept does not exist outside the context of that religion. The OP does not give a contextual limit of only within religions.

 

Yet another fallacious strawman on your part!

Subtract the OT from the NT and there is no validity to the allegation that jesus is the son of god. You can't have your cake and eat it too. It is both or it is neither. Furthermore it would be a direct violation of the teachings of Jesus to ignore every single aspect of the OT. (Matt 5:1

As far as the NT death penalty goes we can start with Jesus himself being executed for blasphemy. Under Judaic law at that time calling yourself the son of god was blasphemy and the penalty for doing so was death. Then we have the statement by Jesus himself, cited above, that all of the OT must be adhered to exactly so that includes all of the things that you are so desperate to ignore in order to prop up your rapidly collapsing position.

 

The topic is religions. Your attempt to derail the thread topic is duly noted and ignored.

 

Ironic that you failed to appreciate that you were guilty of what you were fallaciously accusing me of doing.

Now you are erroneously trying to move the OP goalposts again!

 

Tucking tail and running, easier than admitting defeat I guess. Better luck next time.

 

Not erroneously. I am trying to move them back to the OP. There is nothing in the OP which limits the statement to the context to only religious aspects. Thus the civil concept of Freedom of Religion is included, and as such proves the OP statement of "There is no Freedom of Religion" wrong.

 

Ironic!

 

You failed to refute the OP so now you move the goalposts out of sheer desperation.

Got it!

 

Do yourself a favor, and google irony.

 

What exactly are you suggesting here? How can government be free from religion? Particularly in any country (which is pretty much all of them except China and the Czech Republic) where religious believers outnumber atheists?

Nonsequitur. The growth rates of various beliefs has nothing to do with whether they were or were not raised in the same belief or non-belief. And I think you'll find that the number of Muslims in the US has doubled since 2001, making it grow far faster than atheism, et. al.

No it doesn't. You've already been called out on this, I see. Your quotes from Exodus refer to the Israelites and not to Christians, they refer to God punishing the unbelievers and does not refer to humans carrying out that task, and they do not call on anyone to execute unbelievers. In fact, nowhere in those quotes does God say he's going to kill them, he says they will be punished. As for Jesus, he clearly tells his followers to do good to those that hurt them and bless those that persecute them, so you're clearly wrong that God calls on Christians to kill nonbelievers. Don't go around quoting the Bible out of context if you don't have a clue what it actually says.

You're shifting the meaning of what you said earlier after being called out on it. If you can't admit you were wrong, at least keep quiet about it.

 

Thank you tacitly admitting that you are unqualified to have this discussion since you don't understand the concepts under discussion.

Ironic given your non sequitur response. You made an utterly baseless claim that was refuted by the FACTS. If those raised as atheists were "adopting religion" as adults there would not be a 14.5% swing AWAY from religion and TOWARDS non affiliation between 2007 and 2014.

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

Semantic quibbling on your part does not alter the fact the Bible includes orders by the Christian God to KILL those who don't believe in him and to PUNISH the descendents of those who adopt other faiths.

Ironic given that you are, by you own tacit admission, unqualified to discuss this aspect of the topic.

 

It doesn't matter what exactly the Bible says, because few people interpret its teachings so strictly and literally. How many Christians in America do you see killing people for their religion? Religion is not every little sentence in a book. It is the tenets that people follow in their lives. Freedom of religion, therefore, is the freedom to believe any principles you choose to believe, as long as it doesn't break the law and harm others. It is entirely possible for any religion to coexist with freedom of religion, as long as its adherents don't actually kill people.

There is a term for the adherence to religious doctrine to the point of killing: extremism. Most religious people are not extremists.

 

That does not alter the fact that religious dogma does not endorse freedom of religion. In fact it would be a contradiction for religious dogma to embrace freedom of religion.

 

It is not like people have free will in the matter.

 

Being how some people can seem to grasp some basic concepts such as red herrings and strawman fallacies I have decided that we need to start at the beginning again.

First we have to look at the title: "There is no such thing as Freedom of Religion"

Now obviously by itself, it can present no argument for or against the idea. But it also does not present any limiting context. So far the field is wide open. So on to the OP, where the supporting argument for his position should be.

Well, that was.....brief. And subjective. And has nothing to do with whether or not the concept of Freedom of Religion is still a valid concept in areas other that the strictly religions. Thus, so far, nothing is presented to invalidate Freedom of Religion as a civil concept and nothing to restrict the conversion away from civil concepts. And quite frankly, this is where such restrictions should be presented. But let's go on.

Ok, well first off it seems as if the OP has limited himself to certain religions, without noting to us that his concepts are coming from a limited viewpoint. There are, after all, religions that do not calll for the killing of those who do not believe in their religion, but also do not specify that bad things will happen to those who do not. Wicca, and many of the nature based pagan religions it is based upon, is a prime example. That said, simply because a given religion teaches that they are the only true thing and you shouldn't believe in anything else, it does nothing to debunk the civil concept that one has the freedom to chose their religion for themselves, even if it means rejecting or even accepting the one they were raised in. Nothing in the quoted statement limits the scope of the discussion such as to exclude this civil concept.

I am at a lost for the name of this fallacy, but the OP is assuming that all religions share a common nature of "I am the only true religion and those who don't believe in me must die", which is simply not true, as demonstrated above. Even so, nothing in this post excludes the civil concept of Freedom of Religion.

Basically the OP has made an assertion and has (incorrectly) assumed that the presented evidence by defaults excludes concepts from others source. Yet he has not framed his assertion within a certain focus, nor has he shown how his evidence counters the civil concept. So in conclusion, due to the lack of any contextual constraints, there is indeed such a thing as Freedom of Religion.

 

Again with the strawman. Nothing about the fact that a given religion would not embrace such a concept, does not mean that said concept does not exist. The OP did not assert, "There is no such thing as Freedom of Religion, within a religion itself." He made the assertion that it does not exist at all.

 

Freedom of religion is just a subset of freedom of expression.

I agree that people take it too far. For instance, Christian bakers should be able to refuse to bake gay marriage cakes because of their property rights, not freedom of religion.

 

Since it is patently obvious that your own confirmation bias is clouding your ability to view the OP on it's merits there is no point in wasting any further time trying to convince "true believers" that their chosen religion lacks any semblance of freedom of religion.

Have a nice day!

 

Pot calling the kettle black here. I am taking the OP directly at his words. Since he has not shown up since post three, there is nothing else to drawn conclusions from other than these three posts. Please show me the words within these three posts that demonstrate that how the view of a religion removes the validity and existence of a concept external to that religion.

Furthermore, you keep trying to add a context to the discussion that is not within the three posts. I have yet to disagree with you that indeed many religions (although I disagree on all religions) do not embrace a concept of Freedom of Religion, and within the context of such a religion, the concept does not exist. But you have yet to show, nor are there any words in posts 1, 3, or 5 that limits the scope of the assertion to the context of any religion, or even religions as a whole. Thus while the concept might not exist within the religion, it continues to exist outside of it in the civil context.

I am trying to figure out where exactly you are coming from, especially since you agreed with me on page 6.

 

Thank you for conceding that I was right about the OP.

Have a nice day.

 

You keep saying that you are right about the OP speaking within the context of religion, despite you having agreed with me on page 6 where I was clearly working on the basis of such a context not existing, and yet you have not shown what the OP said that indicated such a context. It is a context the OP should have made clear to support his assertion, but it does not exist.

 

The separation of church and state is a social construct. It holds no basis in constitutional law.