Freedom of Religion or Freedom from Religion?
Glancing through the New York Times today, I noticed an ad who’s title read “Imagine a World Free From Religion”. That got my attention a little so I paused to read some more. Below the heading a picture of New York City (taken before the 9/11 attacks) was displayed. The implied message? A world without religion is a world without war and terror. The ad then went on describe the “growing threat of religious fanaticism here at home”. Beyond wondering whether pastors across our nation would agree with the claim that religious fanaticism is on the rise, I sense that the authors of this ad feel that anyone who is crazy enough to disagree with someone about whether God exists is crazy enough to blow up a building. It’s like someone who feels they were given the wrong change at the supermarket. Whether they are right or wrong, they’re probably not going to stab the sales clerk just because they disagree!
Another big claim they made is that our country was founded on the principles of freedom from God and freedom from religion. Funny, but I always thought it was Freedom OF Religion! They ask the reader to help them “shore up Jefferson’s battered ‘wall of seperation between church and state’ “. I wonder if they’ve actually read Jefferson’s letter. I wonder what he would have thought of the lengths people have gone to twist his words to mean the very opposite of what he was trying to do.
The last thing I want to point out (I could go on for quite a while) is that they bash faith based services in the community. They claim these are destructive to our culture and should be “legally challenged”. I wonder which part of the faith based prisons (for example) they have issues with. Is it the reduced violence and trouble-making, or maybe the reduction in tax payer costs. Whichever part they’re against, I’m certainly glad they’re working so hard to make this country a better place to live.
Note: I feel it would be giving too much credit to the foundation that funded this ad if I put a link to their site on this post, but on the other hand, it would also be wrong not to let you see the other side of the argument. If you’d like to see what they have to say, search “The Freedom From Religion Foundation” on Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) and their site will be the first to come up.
Is “anyone who is crazy enough to disagree with someone about whether God exists” therefore “crazy enough to blow up a building”? No, of course not. But it does take that level of religious or other craziness to carry out such a suicide strike against innocent civilians. And that’s what I get out of the ad.
As for freedom OF religion, that actually does imply freedom FROM religion as well, since by adopting Religion A you are almost always REJECTING Religions B thru Z. Freethinkers and humanists are simply rejecting one more than you do. And under our constitution, we all have the right to do this. Religious freedom is really freedom of conscience, which includes the right to choose “none of the above.”
As for “which part of the faith based prisons” we humanists and freethinkers might have issues with, there are many, given that their statistics are skewed by the fact that only certain participants are allowed in and those who drop out often aren’t counted as a failure of the effort. Put simply, those who run such programs often cook the books to get their wonderful success statistics. Moreover, secular prison programs based on literature and philosophy, and which don’t use suspicious statistics, have a very high success rate. See “Prison Inmates Meet Socrates” in the May/June 2000 issue of the Humanist magazine ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_/ai_62111876?tag=artBody;col1 ).
Fred Edwords, director of communications
American Humanist Association
Thank you for your comments.
I can see what you are saying about the ad, and I’m not arguing over whether religious fanatics CAN do crazy things. The problem was that I felt they were saying that all who are religious are automatically fanatics who might do crazy things. Perhaps they weren’t trying to say that, but that’s the message that came across to me.
When I made a distinction between freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion, I was certainly not saying that everyone must be religious. What I got from the ad was the idea that freedom from religion meant it’s absence (just as freedom from slavery means slavery (in the US) is gone). Everyone has the legal right to choose a religion (or lack thereof). But it’s just as wrong to say that religion should not be allowed as it is to say that having no religion should not be allowed.
Having not gathered the statistics on prisons myself, I’m not able to really verify their validity. Unfortunately, it’s hard to verify the validity of any statistic (including those of secular programs). I was only pointing out prison ministries as an example of what faith based ministries are doing, not as sole proof of why they are a good thing for society.
Again, thank you for comments. You raised some important issues which I hope have helped me to clarify what I’m trying to say.
Will