Government Limitations

Let’s be real clear to start, the American Republican party stole at least one supreme court seat. They either stole it from Obama or they stole it from Biden; or both…but at least one of those seats was stolen. The result of this is that we now have a SCOTUS that thinks religious organizations are above the law based on the decision to block the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, from enforcing an emergency executive order barring gatherings in Catholic Churches or Synagogues (and other religions venues I’m sure) of more than 10 people in a “red zone” or 25 in an “orange zone.” In yellow zones, they are permitted up to 50% of their normal capacity. The ruling is permanent, but it does set up a precedent that overturns what the court said three months ago when a similar lawsuit over the same kind of restrictions was brought up in California.

Three months ago, that latter stolen seat was still occupied and a 5-4 decision went the other way. That is a political gripe that I would need to take up with any so-called “Republican Atheists.” The effect is what I want to take up now because it is vitally important that people become aware of how truly problematic the world is going to get.

First off, as Noah Ludgeons asked on last week’s Scathing Atheist (episode 407) podcast; if the governor of a state, orders an evacuation because of an impending emergency (earthquake, hurricane, alien invasion, etc.) does a church have to obey the evacuation? The answer, from lawyer Andrew Torrez, was “probably not.” In my understanding of the decision, if the government specifically orders a church to evacuate, they can definitely refuse. This is because according to the Supreme Court majority, the New York governor’s executive order singled out houses of worship “for especially harsh treatment.” What was harsh about the treatment? Well, it’s a legal measure that addresses religion, but not in a favorable manner.

Or is it because, unlike liquor and grocery stores, houses of worship pack people into a single room, where they sing next to each other, and breathe in the same air. In Catholic churches they drink from the same cup, and shake hands. You are in and out of a liquor store in what, ten minutes, fifteen max? Catholic church services are an hour long. There is a specific difference between the two types of venues that the SCOTUS majority is purposefully ignoring. A church service would be akin to a concert, and guess what? Those aren’t allowed either, but ever since Kennedy fabricated the “you have to be nice to religion or else its illegal to stop them” criteria in the Masterpiece Cake Shop decision we get this kind of vapid reasoning. Let’s remember that the out of context quote that was “mean to religion” in the Colorado statute was not in the law and was an individual discussing how religion can be used to justify discrimination…which then became a way to justify discrimination. That’s what was mean to religion, pointing out that it discriminates, because it does.

So in the age of the pandemic; governors, mayors, and presidents are going to be unable to do anything about it because superspreader mega-churches are going to flaunt any restrictions on gatherings, any mask mandates, or (and it’s a prediction I’m making right now) any vaccination program. Mandatory vaccination in a pandemic is a solved issue. It was solved by the Supreme Court in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts back in 1905 during a Smallpox outbreak. Jacobsen refused the vaccination citing an earlier childhood response to a vaccine declaring the penalty of five dollars to be a violation of his rights. The Supreme Court rules that Jacobsen was wrong: the penalty did not create a violation of the individual’s rights (even though Jacobsen was a preacher) and that the state has an overwhelming interest in the public safety, during a smallpox outbreak) that overrides the individual liberty that it otherwise guarantees.

Justice Harlan, in the majority decision, writes, “real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”

In other words: the interest of the general liberty could exist if we allowed such a widespread principle that even if one person’s liberty caused harm to others we could not sanction it. The mandatory vaccination program existed to prevent one person’s desire to not be vaccinated put the rest of the public at risk, thus Jacobsen’s penalty was just and not a legal violation.

This decision is now moot if the current enjoinder against the New York governor stands. If a hypothetical plaintiff can point out that their personal religious belief, is in conflict with the law–even if that belief causes direct harm, it doesn’t matter because the religion got its feeling hurt. If we look at the Jacobson case again, only move it to modern times, and instead of Jacobsen’s plea that he had a previous bad reaction to the vaccine he merely pointed out that as his role as a preacher he should be granted a 1st amendment exemption to vaccination–he’d likely win in this court. This decision, if it stands, will kill people. It will cause the pandemic to last longer than it needs to as religious groups have already been flouting any kind of restrictions and that evangelical Christians have already likened any kind of vaccine to Bill Gates, George Soros, and the Mark of the Beast.

People are going to die because of this, but its ok, because the omnipotent creator of the universe saw you in a building on the weekend.

Even the Pope disagreed with this decision.

Atheist’s Perspective: Why I didn’t Go To the Funeral

Last week I had some rather shocking news: my friend and colleague where I pursue my PhD died or a heart attack. We were the same age and I thought in relatively similar health. By that I mean that he never mentioned to me that he was suffering from any health related issues. That is just how it does though, one day you are yelling at your friend to stop being an ass to your other friends on a facebook thread and the next day they are dead. The world turns, the hydrogen continues to fuse in the sun, life as they say goes on.

Tony and I weren’t close. I won’t pretend that we were as many people do when it comes to be funeral time. We were however, allies. We were the only two members of the Christian Philosophy Association that were atheists. We were outspoken atheists as well. We attended the meetings when we could, when they were held, and we did the readings for the meetings. Also, we weren’t disruptive or antagonistic. There was a sense that we were welcome at the meetings as well, even though…or perhaps even because of, we disagreed with the central thesis that the Christian religion accurately represents a historical, physical, and divine objective truth of the world.

It was confusing for me, with him. I wasn’t always an atheist but he claimed to have never believed in god. It made sense because he was very unaware of some basic tenets of Christian doctrine. Things, I thought were impossible to not know. Just growing up in this overwhelmingly Christian country by the process of osmosis I would have thought you would learn about some doctrines. Yet time and time again, he would ask seemingly obvious questions that made even myself groan. It’s one thing to not know that the Immaculate conception is a doctrinal retconning of the story of Mary so that Jesus is born of a person that was without original sin, but it’s quite another to not know the story of the conception altogether (also that it refers to Mary and not Jesus, but most Christians I know are ignorant of that fact). Yet he was quite aware of various Christian movements such as Liberation Theology, a pseudo Marxist movement steeped in Christianity, and could at least acknowledge some of the benefits religion has created (unlike some of the more militant atheists I know).

Tony and I weren’t rabble rousers. We could, as I phrased it, “play the game” meaning that if we assume the foundation were true we could argue the finer points. When it came to doctrine of perdition, people like us were probably more of a boon to the group than a burden since our perspective on what counts as truly wrong wasn’t based in ideas of mere belief. I think it also served everyone well if we could put a semi-reasonable face on atheism. We weren’t the only atheists in the group but we were the only ones that reached out. Our group (which to be fair included a Muslim as well) invited a speaker to debate on the concept of survival after death. It was a public debate that we sponsored, and some of the other students, atheists as well, complained that the department was sponsoring a religious debate where people were engaging over the concept of the soul’s existence upon the death of the body. Tony and I laughed, what did these people expect? The Christian Philosophy group sponsored the damn event and they were complaining that Philosophy of Religion was being discussed!? Idiots.

All that being said, he was fiercely Marxist. He was the liberal I used as an example of a left wing extremist. If the Republicans wanted it, it was wrong didn’t matter what it was. He would lost arguments on my facebook page, due to his ideology mixed with a lack of historical knowledge (not that he was stupid or ignorant of history but that he picked fights with people who had much greater knowledge than he). We agreed and we disagreed, but that’s what life is.

When the formal notice went out, the one that wasn’t an email from the department, I checked the arrangements while preparing to figure out how I was going to get out there. At best I live an hour away, so it involves a process. I couldn’t attend the wake as I had a class to teach so the funeral it was going to be. I hate funerals. It’s not being in a church that bothers me, I can be bored anywhere: but it is one those functions that I am socially awkward at. I don’t know how to act or greet people. Can I make chit chat or does everything have to be serious? In the surprisingly high number of them I have been to I still can pin this down. I walk into job interviews with more self assurance than I enter funerals.

I was going to get over it and go, until I read the obituary and saw the phrase “…a mass of Christian burial will be…”

Again, he wan’t secret about it. He would tell me that he would have regular fights about religion with his family members. Yet, they were going to go against what his view was and merely inflict their view point on the occasion of his death. Now, I know that this sounds a bit paradoxical: in my viewpoint he is dead and you can no longer injure a dead person. If we are still pretending the funeral is about the dead, and not about the living, how can you change the religious view of the person who has died?

This isn’t a harm to the body, that ship has sailed. Harm is impossible at this point so I don’t know what I think is wrong about doing this. It may simply be that the funeral becomes a pretense for what the immediate survivors want rather than what the actual deceased would have desired. I was at a funeral two years ago for a friend’s father that was a less a funeral than it was a recruitment pitch for a mega church and the story I was told was that a close relative had become a minister in the church and it was really his desire rather than the relatively non-religious person that died. If funerals are about the dead, let’s keep them about the dead and not about inflicting our religious views on other people. We really don’t want me doing that or every funeral I’m in charge of is going to look like the detective’s wake from the Wire.