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Is Freedom of Religion the Koan? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-11

Far too many among us demand that they have the only Truth, and that they must Lord it over the rest of us benighted, even evil fools. As for myself, I pray often for those who follow some prophet or savior devotedly all the days of their lives—only making sure never to catch up with them. Thus they consign themselves to the deepest, darkest Hells. The Buddhas and the great teachers insist that we must catch up, and not pretend to what we have no idea of.

Thus a Zen Master must be free to teach

This mind is Buddha.

or

No Mind and no Buddha.

without impediment. We must be free to learn the Four Noble Truths of Birth, Old Age, Dread Disease, and Death, as in the Sutta of Turning the Dharma Wheel, and also to learn, as the Heart Sutra teaches us, that all of them are empty.

We must be free to discard all of our impediments, whether imposed from the outside or invented from within our own karma. Certainly we cannot proceed by imposing new impediments on ourselves or others because reasons based on the opposites.

This coming Thursday is National Religious Freedom Day in the US.

It will be celebrated here on Daily Kos with a number of posts, which I will republish to selected DK groups that I belong to as an Editor.

There is also an International Religious Freedom Day.

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion or religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the right not to profess any religion or belief[1] or "not to practise a religion" (often called freedom from religion).[2]

Under this doctrine and practice, you are allowed to believe and teach that you SHOULD be able to deny others their freedoms, but the law says you can only practice your religion on yourself, under the principle

Your right to swing your fist ends before you reach my nose.

This is taken by some as the grossest denial of their Freedom of Religion. Tough. None of them would support the right of the Thuggee sect in India to offer human sacrifices to Kali by murdering travelers on the roads.

As with any proposed human right, Freedom of Religion does not exist because of words on paper or even parchment. It exists only when enough of us insist that it exists, and provide the oppressed with effective remedies in law.

The Constitution as Catch-22

I maintain that the zeroth principle of Constitutional law, indeed all law, is Catch-22: We have a right to do anything you can't prevent us from doing. The zeroth question thus becomes, "How can we prevent them from violating our rights, or punish them for doing so?" In other words, what remedies do we have?

Thus atheists have far fewer rights in practice than Christians.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation seeks to rectify this injustice.

Ron Reagan: Unabashed Atheist

The Supreme Court has normalized the blasphemous, Mammonite use of the motto

In God We Trust [All others pay cash /s]

on our money, and egregious violations of Freedom of Religion under the pretense of Freedom of Religion Acts.

The Roman Empire claimed to offer complete freedom of religion to all of its subject peoples, on the one condition that everyone offered a pinch of incense to the Roman Gods, including the Emperor, once a year. Jews and Christians refused, and became known as the worst possible atheists, subject to every kind of punishment, including the destruction of the Second Temple, exile of all Jews from Palestine, and gory public executions. When the Christians came into power, they persecuted every other religion, including judaism, and either tore down all of the pagan temples or turned them into churches. Don’t get me started on Bibi Netanyahu and the Ultra-Zionists.

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