Muslim-American woman kicked out of Family Dollar store for wearing hijab and niqab

boing
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Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are often described as a great leaders but I don’t listen to those people.

Taoism also includes exorcism and demons and though it’s theology does not include supreme god figures the Zhuangzi and Tao Te Ching includes immortals though they are not worshiped as uber-gods. That’s reserved for the creator of the philosophy. Taoism as practiced by those born to it is pantheistic and animistic as it mingles with traditional Chinese folk religion.

In essence Taoism is a philosophy that has become a religion over time whereby adherents worship (at shrines and all) the founder of the philosophy along side ancient Chinese deities. You might try to argue that this is a perversion of Taoism but I would argue it is the reality of Taoism. Also, sperm isn’t magic and the belief it has spiritual power is complete wu.

The idea that religion requires a single master god is one of those myopic European views that we should just move past here.

Also, I completely reject your assertion that to be atheist is to involve yourself in the question of theism. Such a position holds no internal or external logic. Without gods is not the same as saying there are gods but i don’t worship them.

Shockingly I did read them and I still do not agree with the courts on this issue. An appeal to authority isn’t much of an argument in my opinion. You cannot discriminate against someone for expressing their religion but you can for them expressing a lack of it. Also, crimes commited against someone for being a member of religion carry a harsher penalty than the same crime committed against someone because they are an atheist. That violates the fundamental principles of our justice system.
Also, if you had bothered to read what I have written in response to you, they you might not have repeatedly misrepresented my views by saying

When I have several times stated that they can come in but not their trinkets of hate and division. If your position requires you misrepresent what someone is saying then it may have no merit. And yes, it is assault in my view to force your religious trinkets on me which I feel represent millennia of war, violence, torture and dehumanization. To me, that speech is hate speech. Now, people have a first amendment right to free speech. This is to say you will not be found guilty of a crime for free legal expression. It does not mean that a shop owner can’t kick you out for saying something they do not like. That’s never been the deal and it never will be.

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Let me put it yet another way and this time in the form of a question: are dogs atheists?

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I don’t know. I’ve never met a dog who could use the complex construct of language to explain their world view.
A better question might be if we never tell a child about religion and they are never exposed to it in any way, are they an atheist? With no knowledge of the existence of religion as a concept, the answer would still be yes. Atheist is a term applied to people without a belief in gods, immortals, rock spirits, and such silliness. It is not a group to which people cleave themselves. It is a general term for various world views and not a movement or group.

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You’re not mistaken in your reasoning. The critical part is that without the ability to imagine the concept of ‘god’, there would be no frame of reference in which theist/atheist would have any meaning. So the question ‘are dogs atheist?’ has no answer because the question itself is fatally flawed.

It’s like that parlor question among cosmologists: if you reached the boundary of the universe, how would you know?

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This spate of hijab-clad wimmins ringing 'merican doorbells and then getting up to no good with the people who answer the door HAS GOT TO STOP!!!

J.F.C.

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This is true only for the conscious self application of the term theist or atheist itself and not for whether the condition we term atheist can be correctly applied to a given individual. The state of not believing in a god is independant of any labeling or external frame of reference.

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No. Humans are pretty much gods to dogs. We’re a (mostly) benevolent force that they cannot truly comprehend, but if they do the correct rituals (fetch, guard the house, look cute) they will be rewarded. Sometimes, again for no reason they can comprehend, we become an angry force of yelling and rage.

By the way, I’m pretty much an atheist too, but I’d like to point out that @anotherone does not speak for all of us. (Technically, I engage in Pagan rituals for the social purpose of religion, but I do not believe there is anything supernatural behind it.)

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Very very very true. I speak for myself alone. Atheists are not a group. They are just people who have been labeled with the same word.

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How is it twisted? “Without gods” is a reaction to the question of whether or not you think there are any. It is merely one way to frame such a position. Like I was saying, a pro-active position could be named for what is instead of what isn’t. Such as “materialist”. That’s why materialists don’t call themselves “anti-spiritualists”.

It’s basic comparative religion. Some systems that some call religions don’t involve gods. Such as Taoism, Buddhism, etc. Some of the adherents have gods, but they aren’t part of the official “doctrine”. Not only that, but many systems don’t even agree about what gods supposedly are. Strong positions for or against there being gods tend to require accepting strict categories first.

You are creating a categorical distinction here, where “spiritual power” and “without evidence” function as opposite poles. As soon as something has evidence, according to your criteria, it isn’t “spiritual” anymore. But this distinction is rather arbitrary, since “spiritual” does not mean anything specific. Literally spirit means “breath” (as in inspire, expire, respire, etc) and there is certainly evidence that breathing is a real phenomena. The only difference is that breath probably seems less mysterious to many than it used to. Whether there is any such thing as “supernatural” all depends upon what you define as natural. To some people, these categories are hugely important.

And what does belief matter? If I create a god and conduct rituals to it without belief, is that still “religion”? Do I need to “believe” in Bugs Bunny to enjoy the cartoons? Do I need to believe that chess pieces are real people in order to play a game of chess? Personally, I hate belief and faith. But I think that if religion wasn’t there, people would simply believe and fight over different things if they were sufficiently determined.[quote=“anotherone, post:208, topic:82880”]
Truly sad isn’t it? Cultures, so wrapped up in imaginary things that they can’t get their collective heads out of their asses long enough to see how much time, energy, and resources are wasted on their imaginary friends while people suffer and starve around them may be quaint and all but do nothing to move humanity forward in any positive way.
[/quote]

Even so-called rational cultures are not really organized around scientific lines either. They keep ritual (commerce, politics, sports, entertainment) but simply exchange the symbols for some which appear more secular. People spend billions of dollars to create and watch movies which are completely imaginary while the world crumbles around them, so why isn’t that “sad” to a rational person? If more people believe that the content of movies is real, would you prefer to ban movies, or simply dismiss the believers as having poor critical thinking skills? The mythologies of the worlds cultures are not “sad” because they are for providing meaning like any other literature or story, they don’t exist to dupe people into believing things. That happens, but it is a separate problem.

As for people being born without religion, you are conflating the doctrine of organized religion with the processes of ritual and myth-making which underlie it in its natural form. People without a church still have fun by imagining and assigning meaning to things.

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See my previous replies. Most of your points are covered. Theism and atheism are states independent of external labels. They exist even if the term form them did not. One can be said to be without gods without having knowledge of religion or gods or the labels we associate with them. Belief is a fundamental component of worship. Without it worship cannot be said to take place and can called ceremony.

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I read those. There is only a small overlap with my previous post.

Or “ritual”. So how is this distinction important? “Worship” and “faith” are mostly western ideas. You are confusing the matter of what it is that you object to. If I devise a god and rituals without belief, is that a problem? What about if somebody “worships” something which blatantly exists, like an ocean? If the problem with gods is that they exist only as cultural artefacts, then why are they any more or less problematic than other concepts which likewise exist only as cultural artefacts?

You seem to rely too much upon other people having the same conceptual baggage that you do.

BTW I will mail you a prize if you can show me tangible truth, beauty, freedom, value, or happiness which don’t exist only as shared made-up ideas. I hope you’ve got your science hat on!

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Because there is no millennia spanning history of death, torture, and dehumanization in the name of the ocean.

You are entering in to the realm of imagination and absurdity here

gravity - the popular name for the force or geometry, however explained by theory, which causes anything with mass to attract all other things with mass.

Funny, I thought you were hung up on conceptual problems rather than the meat of the argument at hand.

Only in that you are wasting effort and energy which could be put to better use. But to apply your idea to the actual discussion being had, without my (as the imaginary shop owner) awareness of your religion and it’s trinkets, I doubt I would have the ability to recognize them and would not object. I also would not object to FSM gear since that is also a religion made up as a lark and without a history of violence and death.
Also, there is no reason to think I can’t pick and choose which religions trinkets to exclude from my shop. I can just stick to the major hate machine religions for my discrimination.

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Like I said, you are conflating the doctrine of organized religion with the processes of mythology and ritual which underlie them. That’s relevant because if people are going to be manipulative assholes and cause suffering then changing the content of their lies is not going to change anything.

Gravitation is a model for physical interactions, it can be more or less accurate in a given domain, but does not have anything to do with the philosophical concept of truth. Even Boolean true/false logic is a system of symbolic abstraction. Materialist scientists simply weigh evidence, they do not pursue truth. That was my point - truth is, like the other things I listed there, metaphysical.

You can’t define for yourself or others what gods, worship, faith, dehumanization, spiritualism, etc if you refuse to deal with conceptual problems. Otherwise, yes, you are simply hoping that others will know what you mean when you say these things. Yet you seem to acknowledge that they are somewhat nebulous concepts!

That seems to clarify that your problem is with specific organization of people rather than the concepts of what might be considered religion itself.

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That’s not the point I’m making… my point is that the law forbids what you’re talking about, not whether or not it’s a good law. It hardly matters if you or I disagree with it. Disagreement with the law doesn’t make it any less the law. You can work to change it and certainly break that law if you feel it’s unjust. But undoing the civil rights act would be a disaster and I think we all know that. I’ll also say again that the reason why religion is part of the CRA is that religious minorities have often been discriminated against, at times violently.

My point continues to be that unless someone comes into your establishment, causing a ruckus and upsetting you and your customers, you can’t just throw them out without legal consequences. I don’t believe that (as in this case) a hijab is worth throwing someone out of your store. You may disagree, but that doesn’t mean the CRA is any less in force.

Let me get this straight, since you believe I am misrepresenting you: Are you saying that people coming into your establishment can have no visible signs of religiosity? Do you mean everything from a cross to a nun’s habit, a hijab, or a kippah, or a monks robes, etc? No religious shirts of any kind? I’ve already covered talking about their faith and trying to convert people in your shop and think that’s probably covered under making a disturbance of some sort.

To reiterate my point - I do believe that someone can’t throw someone who is not causing problems out for simply wearing religious clothing, which, unless I’m misunderstanding you, is what you are talking about.

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And yet a great bunch of the right wing Mra brand of “skeptic” believe as you, your culture is pretty well defined and not as ruggedly individual as you perceive yourselves.

You also believe that because you REALLY hate a person, that the civil rights protections granted to others don’t apply to your application and expressions of hatred.

You cling to this willful ignorance because it fills you with power and perceived superiority over others, just like the theists argue over whose sky God is better.

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Of course it matters. That’s the entire point of discussion. To say that “this is the law and that’s the end of the discussion” is simple authoritarianism and not an actual argument. Marijuana is also illegal at the federal level but we still discuss changing that. To say that the civil rights amendment must be thrown out to change it is hyperbole and just silly. It has been amended and changed many times. Yes, I understand that there may be legal consequences and I also understand that unless you test a law then these questions will continue to arise.

That conflation happened long before you and I came on the scene and I would argue is not a bug but a feature of religion and faith. To say I am responsible for this conflation is disingenuous at best.

Blind unquestioning faith in religion is one of the primary ways people are fomented to blind violence and hatred. Without religion we are left with jingoism which in most countries is also tied to religion. It’s not a very good argument to say if we remove religion then people will be urged to violence some other way. That’s simply defeatist and nihilistic and apathy isn’t a productive means of dealing with a problem.

Sorry but no. Truth exists outside human experience. Truth does not require mumbo jumbo. Entropy increases. That is truth. Your argument here is threadbare semantics.

I’m not refusing to deal with anything other than your attempts at semantic rambling.

No, my ultimate problem is the loss of knowledge and life resulting from religion. Religion causes more harm and waste than any other human controlled force. It is a plague upon humanity and should be stopped.

@Phrenological if you had something beyond the ad hominem and false strawman narratives you might have gotten a reply.

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I didn’t say that - I said it’s the current law and that it exists for very good reasons. I also think that removing the CRA would be a disaster. I never said laws can’t or shouldn’t be challenged, changed or amended. As I’m working to better understand your position, I’d appreciate the same courtesy.

I do think that the CRA is a good law and should be kept because it protects people from exploitation and discrimination - historical facts of our country. And yes, it has been changed - generally to include more protected groups. I think that’s a positive thing. Government works best when it’s working to mediate between groups within our society and to protect those who’ve historically been discriminated against (as well as being our representative to other large institutions - corporations, other governments, etc).

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Okay, let me try to get this straight:

  1. You have a right to run a business how you see fit.
  2. This right is not based on religion, since you find religion abhorrent.
  3. This right is not based on law, because you acknowledge that you may face legal consequences for exercising that right.
  4. This right is not based on ethical, moral, or cultural values, because you acknowledge that your patrons may walk away from your business because you exercise that right.

If not from the revealed word of some deity, and if not from the laws of your country, nor the will of the public, then from whence does this right originate?

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By the condition of being human we are all possessed of basic human rights. The right to self determination and the right to seek happiness are inalienable rights. It’s probably worth pointing out here that rights are not granted by governments or god. They exist independently of those constructs. Otherwise we would call them privileges. Take our Bill of Rights for example. Many mistakenly believe that these are some enumeration of our rights when in fact it is a list of things the government is not allowed to do. This is a basic founding principle of my country.

As do I. But I do think it needs amending.

Agreed, but consider that religion pays no taxes yet benefits from extra protections under the law. Further, religion enjoys extra representation under the law than I. Sessions of congress are started by prayer and legal protections are granted to religions though they are not burdened with the responsibilities of community involvement by paying taxes like the rest of us. Are disenfranchised minorities given these considerations? No, they are not. Therefor, I would argue that the CRA is flawed as it stands.