The Forum > Article Comments > The loveless marriage: 'religious' and 'freedom' > Comments
The loveless marriage: 'religious' and 'freedom' : Comments
By Hugh Harris, published 23/12/2015It's better to think of religious freedom as freedom of belief. That way, it's less likely to be used as a Trojan horse to favour religion.
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Everyone already has freedom of belief including religious people. No one can control what you believe. Religious people have the right to believe what they like but they do not have the right to act as they like. This is how they try and manipulate society by making it sound as if they are being denied some fundamental human right. When they try and get the school curriculum changed it is an action but when they are denied such change they claim it is an abuse of the freedom of religion. They can still have their beliefs just not certain outcomes effecting education.
Religious people have never had the freedom to do what they like. They have always had to live in a society which must be considered as a whole. They have had to make way for human rights which translate to non-religious people as well. The reality was that most of society once wanted what religious people wanted and so there was little discord. Now things have changed and in western societies the non-religious are the majority.
Religious people now find that they have to argue for the actions they want to take and their arguments are found wanting because they are not and never have been based on reason. When they cannot come up with good reasons they resort to emotional manipulation by claiming that their ‘freedoms’ are being denied. They should present their arguments like everyone else in society has to and let them be judged on their merits. They cannot claim dispensation from the judgement by reason unless they allow such dispensation for everyone else in society.
We should be alert to this kind of manipulative ploy. If they have valid reasons for wanting to act in certain ways or for wanting society to adopt certain rules then as a part of that society they are duty bound to abide by the rules of reason. That is the way ‘God’ made us.