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The free exercise of religion is thwarted when the state mandates that you cannot exercise religion in public school, because the exercise of religion necessitates regular practice and study, and this necessity conflicts with the time schedule and obligations of secular education. 8am to 3pm every day of the workweek, with extra-curriculars extending that to 5pm, effectively abolishes religion if religion is not included in the classroom. A good solution is to allow the taxes of religious people to go towards their own religious education which is to take place in public or private school. The “separation of church and state” is a succinct phrase which helps explain why the free exercise of religion can’t be prohibited, but it shouldn’t be misunderstood to mean that the state prohibits religious activity in state facilities — if anything it means that it must allow all kinds of religious activity in state facilities. This includes religious activity in schools.
This argument would be stronger if school was monopolizing students time. From my understanding, the school is not. Plenty of kids have enough free time to learn an instrument, play a sport, get really good in some video game, become an expert of some nerdy lore like warhammer, baseball or LotR, etc. I am sure that there are religions who mandate that their followers study their scripture for at least five hours a day, but if you feel you need to accommodate these in public schools, then the next thing you will be someone saying that their religion requires them to loudly yell 'Blessed be His Noodly Appendages' every five minutes.
Do you generally propose a system where the general taxes of people in some special interest groups are used for the goals of these groups? So the religious taxpayers get to fund religious education, while the taxes paid by of fans of adult entertainment go to fund state-run strip clubs?
Ideally, taxes are there for universal expenses. Almost all citizens use roads. Almost all citizens benefit from not being invaded. I will grant you that a lot of the sinks modern states pour taxes into are not that clear-cut public goods: public education, aircraft carriers (for the US) and welfare, preservation of the environment, cultural events and a zillion other things can be debated at length.
But the key point is that taxes go to what society has decided are collective needs. If you are proposing taxing religious people more so that their extra taxes can fund religious education (and the same for the admirers of scantly clad females and strip clubs), then I am ok with it. Of course, the easier system would be that the state does not collect these voluntary taxes, and people get to spend their money after taxes however they want.
What you’ve listed are leisure activities. Video games, fantasies, sports, and playing an instrument are for leisure. (Unless a student is exceptional, they have just one hour a week of a violin teacher or something which may constitute non-leisure education, I suppose). The fact that students do not typically learn from books/teachers in an organized setting away from their school system strongly indicates that school has a monopoly on non-leisure learning. What we can call “book learning”. But book learning is an essential part of religious indoctrination, which means it is an essential part of the exercise of religion. A human is simply not able to absorb “book learning” after ~6 hours of secular education with 1-2 hours of at-home work. To me this means that we have thwarted the free exercise of religion. We have overburdened the right.
One hour is more reasonable, but adding an hour of book-learning on top of the modern school curriculum is an unreasonable burden. I think up to two hours is acceptable.
Category error. Religion is not mere special interest or mere hobby. Religion is a special protected activity for a reason: it encompasses urgent, existential and totalizing moral concerns. It’s its own category of human activity. And the believer necessarily believes that the education in his religion is urgent and essential.
Your theory of taxation is not an enshrined right. But freedom of religion is such a right. It’s both more logical and more just for the tax revenue from a religious group to go toward that group’s religious education — not with extra money, because that overburdens their right to religious exercise. If they are paying for 18 “credits” of high school, then allow them to substitute 8 of these credits for up to “8” religious credits. This way the school is not funding religious education except with the funds of those who desire to practice their right to pursue religious education.
Yes it is.
Urgent, existential and totalizing moral concerns are covered by the subject of ethics, and I don't disagree with teaching ethics in schools. Each religion, however, combines one specific ethical system with additional myths and rituals. As an old-school internet atheist, I disagree that the government should assist parents with converting their children to their preferred religion; since all religions are equally (in)valid, schools should either teach all of them (to help children properly exercise their freedom of religion) or none at all (to stay on the right side of the state/church separation line).
If we’re arguing outside the premise of the First Amendment then there are valuable reasons for why a State would wish to permit the exercise of religion. (1) It’s a social technology that increases fertility, wellbeing, and civic engagement. (2) Ethics as a discipline lacks the moral force of religious language and ritual in promoting behavior and community, because religion involves personification and story and metaphor (and what you call myths). Ethics is to ethical behavior what “learning about oxytocin” is to experiencing love; religion is the beautiful woman. (3) The State should allow for competing forms of religious and ethical thought because humans have yet to determine the best one, and diversity will increase competition so we can judge them by their fruits.
Right, so promoting specific religion goes against this goal. If diversity and increased competition is the goal, the state should introduce children to underrepresented minority religions to see if any of them can dislodge the established ones.
There’s no reason to believe that religions which perished in the past are going to be as competitive as new and evolving religions. It’s a theological survival of the fittest; you wouldn’t think business practices in 1600 were better than today, right?
Why not? The environment has been changing as well, maybe Bogomilism or Sevener Shi'a will flourish after being introduced to the 21st century US.
You are welcome to practice Bogomilism, but because the movement already died out it’s improbable that it contains beneficial features that haven’t already been incorporated by mainstream orthodoxy. With tradition, what is beneficial is kept and what is harmful is culled over generations. Whichever group utilizes the best traditions is the group that has the healthiest families, the best social order, and the most industrious members. It’s for this reason that atheism is an infertile abnormality in the history of mankind, why a great atheist nation never developed, and why the cultures that went full atheism inevitably rediscover religion (France, Buddhism). Instead of the humble acknowldgement that “my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me”, the atheist believes that all he should believe is all that he knows. Illogical, given the limitations of the human mind.
But anyway, I think atheists should be allowed to spend their school credits however they wish. They should be happy about that — wouldn’t they get an advantage from 8 extra secular non-religious credits?
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