Religious freedoms revisited.

Well August 1^st came and went and Western civilization is still intact.  Even though one politician on the right compared the ACA’s free preventive care for women to Pearl Harbor and 911, the day passed with no apparent casualties.  That is, if you don’t count the loss of religious freedom. 

But I think it’s important to specify exactly what religious freedom was lost.  It was the religious freedom to impose your religious beliefs on people who don’t share those beliefs.  Specifically, it was the freedom to claim conscientious objection to providing contraceptive insurance coverage to those who don’t share your beliefs (which includes about 90 percent of your own followers).

So in reality, the only freedom that was lost was the religious freedom to impose your beliefs on someone else.  And to that I say, good riddance.

Spinoza had it right: “Spinoza argues that all individuals are to be absolutely free and unimpeded in their beliefs, by right and in fact. “It is impossible for the mind to be completely under another’s control; for no one is able to transfer to another his natural right or faculty to reason freely and to form his own judgment on any matters whatsoever, nor can he be compelled to do so.”

For this reason, any effort on the government’s part to rule over the beliefs and opinions of citizens is bound to fail, and will ultimately serve to undermine its own authority. A sovereign is certainly free to try and limit what people think, but the result of such a policy, Spinoza predicts, would be only to create resentment and opposition to its rule.”

It’s not very likely that those who have taken on the self-appointed mantle of authority will read Spinoza.  They are conservative extremists who believe in individual freedoms except when they don’t.  And I doubt that Spinoza is on their reading lists just after Ayn Rand.

Unfortunately for the real conservatives who value hard work, individual responsibility, fiscal restraint and family, the religious zealots have taken over what was once truly “the grand old party.” 

It’s now impossible for a moderate conservative to get the party support he or she needs unless he or she sounds as radical as the extremists at the far right end.  Like Bryan Fischer who says there ought to be a law requiring all people to attend church on Sunday.  Or we should set up an underground railroad to move children we kidnap from same sex parents.  Or Phyllis Schafly who claims Mr. Obama never mentions the “Creator” when he quotes the constitution, even though there are dozens of recordings of him using that term.  Or those who still question his religious beliefs because his father was a Muslim.

In the new book, "The Party Is Over," veteran Republican Mike Lofgren writes about the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism and how the GOP devolved into anti-intellectual nuts.

“The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.”

Well at least I agree with them on one thing: There really is a war on religion.  And it’s not Mr. Obama’s war.  It’s the Republican Party’s affiliation with the radical right-wing, Fundamentalists Christians.  Their war is destroying authentic Christianity.  Their war vilifies real Christians and Christ’s message of peace, love, compassion and forgiveness.  Their war is based on the god created by man.  And their man made god hates all the same people they do.

Robert DeFilippis