Religious exemptions for the non-religious

[Douglas Laycock]

I am sitting out this discussion because I have an oral argument 
tomorrow (on a remedies case of no interest to this list).  I don't 
think that plausible claims to exemption by nonbelievers arise very 
often, and objections to killing may comprise all or most of the list.  
But neither do I think that one forfeits protection for his most deeply 
held moral commitments when he crosses a certain line in the evolution 
of theological views.  And I think that one role of the Religion 
Clauses is to mediate religious conflict in the society, and that today 
they must mediate the religious-secular conflict just as in the past 
they mediated the Protestant-Catholic conflict and the Anglican-Baptist 
conflict.  It is very hard for the Clauses to perform that function if 
one side of the conflict is outside the Clauses.

Back to silence.

Quoting "Berg, Thomas C." <TCBERG at stthomas.edu>:

> I'm not sure what "the denial of physics" means.  Doesn't one deny (or
> affirm) a particular proposition or set of propositions about physics?
> Similarly, it seems to me that there is a recognizable usage of "religion"
> that includes varying positions on the ultimate questions such as the
> existence of a deity (deities) or the afterlife -- including the negative
> answers -- although there's also a commonly used sense in which "religion"
> includes only the positive answers of various sorts.  So I guess I'd say
> that the first usage, in addition to being a better fit for the logic of the
> two religion provisions, is also more than just a usage made up for that
> purpose.  I agree that one is far less likely to "exercise" the
> negative-answer beliefs, but as I said in the previous post I think there
> are instances in which they too are exercised.
>
> Tom Berg
>
> ______________________
>
>
>
> In a message dated 3/1/2007 4:06:41 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> TCBERG at stthomas.edu writes:
>
> Atheism and agnosticism should be considered religions for free exercise
> purposes because, as Doug has argued in print, we would regard them as
> religions for establishment purpose
>
>        It might be the right approach to "consider" atheism a religion for
> FE and EC purposes, just as long as we make it clear that, in fact, atheism
> is no more a religion than the denial of physics is physics. Constitutional
> necessities might require distorting ontology for important reasons, but it
> does not change ontology by doing so.
>
> Bobby
>
> Robert Justin Lipkin
> Professor of Law
> Widener University School of Law
> Delaware
>
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Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713