Reg:

Remember Kim Davis in Kentucky? She was an elected county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Courts ordered her to comply. She refused and was briefly jailed for contempt of court.

Can a public official refuse to carry out a legal duty because of personal beliefs? There are two fundamentally different ways to…

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Fullermingjr:

Even so, one could tolerate her beliefs and maybe an opportunity may arise where a real dialog could happen.

As I recall from my reading, the gods mentioned in both The Tower of Babel myth and the Icarrus myth were jealous gods who didn’t want Man getting literally uppity. Believers in gods like these can’t possibly have a high…[Read more]

Yes, Fuller, i did say and i do mean that religion is make-believe.

Were it not for indoctrination and the personal stake and emotions of wish thinking then god(s) would be as easy to discard as Santa Clause or fill in the blank. It is childish. It is infantile. But we are human and there you are.

@fullermingjr No religion is rational by the very definition of the word rational – derived from logic and reason etc.

A religion is by definition a faith based construct, for which belief  is required, not reason.

A Venn diagram of Religion and Rationality would barely touch at their potential meeting point.
I suppose Religion could be…[Read more]

@TheEncogitationer

“Well, I don’t believe in learning other languages. I believe God gave men different tongues and divided them at The Tower of Babel and that’s how it’s meant to be.”

How very sad!  The woman’s faith system that said that statement… that thinks humanity should be divided this way has completely missed (a) the point of Babel a…[Read more]

Fullermingjr:

To address your workplace concerns, first, understand, I’m not lumping you in with other religionists, but I’m just recounting what I’ve encountered:

I myself take my breaks and eat my lunch alone and only try to talk shop, not philosophy or religion. Politics sometimes unavoidably comes up at work with talk about health care…[Read more]

I would think the distinction between employee in private v official government position or quasi government is pretty straightforward. Compelling and accommodating trickier.

Modern workplaces bring together people with fundamentally different worldviews, be they religious, secular, scientific or ideological and then ask them to cooperate as if those differences don’t matter. But in reality, they do matter. The trick is deciding when they matter at work and when they don’t.

For me the issue is never “belief vs belie…[Read more]