Re: Richard Dawkins and religious discrimination

>The entire argument rests on the faulty assumption that religious ideas are 
>protected and non-religious ideas are not. I'm no lawyer, but it seems to 
>me that if I were dismissed from my job because I believe in a subterranean 
>super-race of mole people, I would start taking notes for my wrongful 
>dismissal suit. Unless that belief interferes with my completion of 
>assigned tasks (I am an excavator operator who will not break ground on a 
>building project for fear of angering the mole people) or it interferes 
>with my coworkers, clients, or customers (sales are down at the hardware 
>store because I keep scaring people away with talk of their underground 
>masters when all they wanted to do was buy a hammer). My personal beliefs--  
>religious or otherwise-- are personal, and if they don't interfere with my 
>job, then there is no cause for termination. <

Legally speaking this isn't quite correct, even if it is the way it should 
be.  Unless you have an employment contract, which specifies grounds for 
termination, you are considered an "at will" employee.  This means that you 
can be fired for any reason, or none at all, EXCEPT for constitutionally 
protected reasons, such as religious beliefs.  Much more simply, (why didn't 
I say it this way first?), the assumption that religious ideas are protected 
and non-religious ideas are not *is* a correct assumption, not a faulty one.


>>"I would not want to live in Dawkins' perfect world, because it would be a 
>>world of profound and fathomless sameness. We need our eccentrics. We need 
>>preposterous ideas, for how else will we be shaken out of our false 
>>beliefs, unless challenged with what we know must be impossible? Give me 
>>the bizarre, the preposterous, and yes, the delusional: better that than 
>>the bleak unity of a world squeezed into neat, pseudo-empirical boxes."<<

Nicely put.

I may be repeating myself, but I find it interesting the evangelical zeal 
with which some of the more well known atheists approach their atheism.  As 
much as I like Penn Teller, I think he is an evangelical atheist, although a 
much nicer guy that Dawkins appears to be.  But they both seem intent on 
promoting atheism, converting others to it, and condemning heretics, (i.e. 
those who believe in a god of some sort).  That may not technically meet the 
definition of being a religion but if that doesn't approach religiosity I 
don't know what does.

Mike F.




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