All posts tagged "Religious Belief"

Those who believe some people face eternal torment in the afterlife tend to be less satisfied with their current life and less happy, according to a new study published in PLoS One.

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell attacked the idea that the government was incapable of creating jobs during his 'Rewrite' segment.

The post below devolved into the same conversation that often happens when an atheist uses the same public forums aggressively used by believers to spread their beliefs---i.e., speaking up in books and websites. Why do atheists have to go around making the nice religious people uncomfortable? The religious people invoked in defending the religious privilege---the right not to be made uncomfortable, a privilege not extended to non-believers---are always the Platonic ideal of non-offensive believer, someone who barely believes really, keeps it to themselves, has no moral differences from an atheist, stays the course on the liberal party line and doesn't squirm over Teh Gay or Teh Abortion, and maybe even agrees that "under god" should be taken out of the Pledge. We all like liberal Christians, so can atheists just stay in the closet and not upset the nice ones?

One thing that continues to frustrate me about the pharmacy refusal debates is that all the attention is paid to the rights of pharmacists to religious freedom, and none is paid to the rights of their customers that are being violated. I think in part this is because almost all those refusing service are men and almost all those being refused are women (or gay men, in some cases). And we as a society tend to think first of the rights of men over women. But we're letting the wingnuts frame this argument---by making it about the religious rights of the refusers, we are letting them subtly imply that women are not citizens with full rights worth equal protection by the government. In my latest column at RH Reality Check, I argue that when a pharmacist refuses to serve a female customer because he believes she is sexually active in a way that goes against his religion, he is discriminating her on two counts that are arguably illegal: