shouldn't a wiccan be able to conjure up whatever the need ?

I cannot make sense out of you, Orrin.

You insist darwinism is a religion, against the opinion of its adherents, but now you turn around and tell others, who consider their beliefs are a religion, that they are not.

There oughta be some standard, and it oughta be something a little more stable than your feelings of rancor.

Harry:

Not a protected religion under the First Amendment.

OJ:

It is a statute, designed for remedial purposes, and so courts would generally construe it broadly. All the Court held was that the statute did not violate the first amendment. Notice the land use part-- it has been very helpful in stopping antichurch zoning, and the institutionalized persons part has been strongly supported by Prison Fellowship Ministries (Chuck Colson) and other Christian groups. If a few Wiccans sneak in, so be it.

Dan:

The prisons weren't violating the Amendment.

No, but they did not comply with the statute. Nothing in the 1st amendment REQUIRES the statute, but the Court held that nothing in the 1st amendment prohibited it, either.

Believe me, Chrisitian groups LOVE RLUIPA.

Undoubtedly. Short-sighted though.

Makes as much sense as the rest of their pronouncements on religion. It also reveals their real contempt for religion by classifying these invented pseudo-religions as worthy of constitutional protection. Wait until the rasta-men show up and ask for their splifs and the tantric sex practioners want to do their thing.

I'm not surprised to see Harry roar in here. Anti-religious secularists are always ready to go to the wall for cults and obscure sects. You can hear them chortle as they throw their airtight rationalist logic at tongue-tied religious people trying to articulate why, say, Judaism and the local coven that takes off their clothes to bay at the moon are equallly deserving of public and legal respect.

This is a very tough issue--whether religion in the public square is defined by tradition, customary doctrine and consensus or by the beliefs of individuals. It's a good reason for the religious to be cautious and thoughtful about anything to do with schools, etc. There are answers, but not easy ones.

And the invented pseudo-religions are distinguished from the others how?

Peter:

I re-read Harry's post, and can't find a word in it defending any cult or sect. Rather, he pointed out a glaring inconsistency in how one religionist defines religion, thereby highlighting the folly of the exercise.

Jeff:

They aren't Abrahamic.

Jeff:

The article is about Satanism and Wiccan.

Yes, rationalism won't help you here. Traditional wisdom, experience and reason will, but as you don't recognize the authority of those on this subject and believe that logically incompatible religious narratives and strictures is an effective argument against religion itself, what is left to say?

Peter:

Mormonism. Religion or cult?

Jehovah's Witnesses. Religion or cult?

World Church of the Creator. Religion or cult?

Catholicism. Religion or cult?

Islam. Religion or cult? Oops. Forgot mention whether Sunni, Shiite, or the particularly mystical variant whose name I can't quite apprehend at the moment (Suffism?).

The particular subjects of this article are Satanism and Wiccan; however, what this article is really about, though, is how distinguishing a true religion from the invented pseudo kind is a fool's errand.

A point Harry neatly surfaced, BTW. And which has nothing to do with Traditional Wisdom, experience, et al. Funny how all the responses to Harry completely elided the point.

My previous posts on this subject have not been an argument against religion, per se, but rather an argument against any claim of possessing Absolute, Divinely Revealed, Truth (tm).

There's a difference.

jeff:

Only the Abrahamic religions are protected.

Its a puny religion indeed that doesn't rest on its adherents belief in an Absolute, Divinely Revealed, Truth (tm). We are talking about faith after all.

Seeing Harry pining for a standard based upon something other than feelings of rancor is just a scream. You go first, Harry.

isn't the most important aspect of a government's relationship with religion, allowing it to be practiced, and not whether or not it gets the same perks (as another religion) ?

as long as wiccan's aren't being forcibly prevented from assembling, they really have no grounds for complaints.

jefferson:

But all those do.

Jeff: Tradition, revelation, and reason.

The contemptuous dismissal of religion by the court has left in unable to deal with it in any meaningful way, or to make any meaningful distinctions.

Robert:

Tradition, revelation, reason. Wonderful. Which of those makes the cut, and which do not?

OJ:

I'm sorry, I missed the Abrahmic citation in the Constitution; perhaps you could point it out?

Jefferson:

You missed my point. It isn't that religions don't make such a claim; rather, the plethora of competing, mutually exclusive claims, makes at least all but one a charade.

The Creator is Abraham's God.

"Tradition, revelation, reason. Wonderful. Which of those makes the cut, and which do not?"

They are all important factors that distinguish real religions from the invented pseudo-religions.

Jeff:

You can't get out of the lab, can you, even when we concede lab tools alone support you? Do you ever ponder the fact that so few people are troubled by your argument, even though it has been front and center in religious thought since the late Middle Ages? Do you conclude that all religious people are ignorant and don't understand the most basic and obvious logic?

Jeff:

I got your point -- I'm just untroubled by the notion that there is a "plethora of competing, mutually exclusive claims, [making] at least all but one a charade".

Peter:

Robert above claimed to be able to distinguish "pseudo religions" from the real thing, which, at heart is what this is all about.

I contend that claim, and any similar legal claim is empty.

As is OJ's specious notion that only Abrahmic religions get constitutional protection. The Declaration uses conspicuously deist terminology in referring to a Creator, and the Constitution is even more silent on religious preference, except where barring such a thing completely.

For those religious people who see absolute truth when they look in the mirror, basic and obvious logic don't even enter the picture.

And as for those who claim any particular religion deserves constitutional protection at the expense of the others, I have one word for you:

Lebanon.

You might have heard of it.

Jefferson:

Perhaps you should be.

Jeff:

The language is quite straighforwardly Christian, but Deism was Abrahamic.

Jeff-

The people of the revolutionary era were rallied by deist claims of God-given rights? I don't think so. What you call 'deism' was politically expediant non-sectarianism speaking to an overwhelmingly Christian people. Not wiccan or satanist or animist. You may dislike the certainty many Christians hold toward their faith but it differs little from that of the founding generation. We don't need to determine the 'true' faith, only the history of American belief and the legal foundation it is a part of. Christianity, and its roots, was assumed by all.

Peter, I invite you to visit the website of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has reprinted a bunch of my RLUIPA stories.

The particular cult that needed defending in our county was an odd version of Judeo-Christianity that runs a sort of perpetual Succoth.

The point being, of course, that no one can say what is in another's heart, and while Orrin in his rancor can cast out the unsaved, in practice it ain't so easy.

I get a great deal of satisfaction from seeing Christians attack each other, but I'm durned if I can figure out what the Christians get from it.

Harry:

Who said anything about Christians?

The Maui County Planning Commission, in this instance, when it refused to grant a building permit to the Hale O Kaula Church on the grounds that, according to the neighbors (all professed Christians), it was a 'cult.'

The Hale O Kaulans, on the other hand, claimed to be practicing a 'Joseph ministry' based on the Old Testament. You may have heard of it.

Until somebody can devise a reliable sheep/goat separator, everybody's religion is a religion.

Harry:

So, not Christians, but the state. There's an easy test--the First Commandment.

Every traditonal faith started out as a cult. Every orthodoxy has a heretic as its founder. Traditional faiths are just spiritual ruts worn by generations of conformists who have benefitted from the social acceptability of conventions that they took no hand in establishing.

"Tradition, revelation, and reason."

Reason won't cut it, that is why man needs revelation, right? But revelation happens every day, it has become so ubiquitous as to be absolutely useless in giving any determination of truth. You complain about naked people baying at the Moon, but would anyone in their right mind today join a religion founded by a man who said that God told him to burn his son on an altar? It is funny how our perception of what is reasonable is modified by the passage of time and repetition.

reason is just a tool of faith, useful in showing the wisdom of revelation.

What is reasonable about infanticide? If you really were serious about reason, you would reject the Abrahamic faith.

Don't get sidetracked, Robert. Yes, it's true that anyone with decent instincts would reject the Abrahamic faith (if he were allowed to evaluate it unemotionally).

The question here, though, is not, although Orrin wishes to make it so, what I (or any other individual) thinks of your faith, but what you think of it.

If a man says he's a Christian, what other man can say he isn't?

Orrin thinks it is easy to determine which is religion and which is not, but as my experience with Hale O Kaula showed, it isn't.

All the contending parties in that dispute were -- according to their own statements -- Christians. Yet they could not stand each other.

This is the factor that will eventually, I'm pretty sure, wreck Orrin's political program --- Christians cannot stand each other.

You're right about that Harry. Which makes you wonder why the founders ever thought that they could establish some generic, civic form of Christianity that they could all live with, without an explicit establishment. I guess they underestimated the tendency of absolute truths to mutate under the influence of ongoing revelations. Had they foreseen the outbreak of Mormonism, do you think they would have still voted against establishment?

Robert:

Nothing. why?

Harry:

Yes, if a man believes in Christ he's Christian.

In your example it was the state vs. religion.

Robert:

Indeed, the Constitution explicitly allows Utah to establish the Mormon church.

Robert, I think the Founders' conception of religion is indisputable: As Article VI proves, they thought that government could not function if religion had a place in it.

It was an afterthought, stated in the First Amendment, that neither could religion function with government in it.

It is not so surprising that they overlooked that. They were, after all, setting up a government, not setting up a church.

Orrin is confused about their purpose.

Orrin, in my example, a faction of Christians manipulated the state to suppress another faction of Christians. The secular government had no dog in that fight.

Harry:

It was a state body acting against a religious one, no?

Article VI merely established the ecumenical nature of the republic.