Religious Liberty Quiz

Please write on the chalkboard 100 times, "I will stop posting silly Internet quizzes to the website."This is a stupid, stupid quiz, but it gives me the opportunity to go off on a number of fun rants and tangents, so here we go:

1. Students should have a religious right not to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
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   The only religiously relevant objection to the pledge would be the "under God" part. I guess one could imagine Muslims objecting that it should be "under Allah." And there could be anti-religious objections to the "under God" part.
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   Whether or not to say the pledge is a freedom of speech issue. Under our constitution you cannot be prevented from saying what you want (except for the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" type of thing), and you cannot be forced to say things you do not want.
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   We live in a free country. Forcing people to say the pledge would go against the very words of the pledge itself: "with liberty and justice for all."
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   Also, in the modern world isn't pledging allegiance to anything kind of Medieval? It's reminiscent of pledging allegiance to your lord or king.
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   Those who believe pledging allegiance to a country is the right and patriotic thing to do should think about what a country does to the patriotic men and women who enlist in their armed forces. They send them charging up a hill into the maws of cannon at Gettysburg. They abandon a squad to be slaughtered as a diversion in WWII. They rain napalm down on them in Vietnam, and when they show up at the VA they disclaim knowledge of any connection between the illnesses and napalm. A half century later they expose them to burn pits in Afghanistan and then pull the same "we know nothing" stunt.
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   Most people love their country, but realize that your country does not love you back. If you're willing to be one of those who "gave that last full measure of devotion" then you're not a patriot - you're a dope. Wars are just another arrow in the quiver of politicians. It's one of the very few things Trump and I agree on. Justifiable wars are few and far between? WWI, WWII and the Korean War? Absolutely necessary. The Mexican, Spanish/American, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars? No.
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2. Service personnel on military bases should be permitted religiously mandated headwear regardless of uniform dress codes.
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   I have no opinion on this one, but if the papers people sign when they enlist say that they agree to wear the uniform they're issued, then they should either hold to their word or not enlist.
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3. Incarcerated persons should be permitted religiously mandated headwear regardless of prison dress codes.
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   Aren't the indignities we visit upon the incarcerated cruel and inhumane enough? Modern prisons are no more than ancient dungeons with a modern veneer. Prisons should be rehabilitation centers, not crime schools. Punishment should end with the end of your sentence. Instead release just begins another period of punishment consisting of things like probation, parole and supervised release. Then there's a lifetime of no voting rights and hugely diminished job opportunities. If prisons were any good at rehabilitation and job training then employers would be lining up at the doors of prisons instead of universities.
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   For those who believe prisons are for punishment and deterrence, you're living in the Middle Ages.
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   When a society releases people from prison but makes sure they can't make a living, how will they survive? The way we do things is completely counterproductive. Prisons should be taking in criminals and releasing productive citizens. Instead, in too many cases they're releasing even worse criminals.
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4. Children should have a religious right to attend school without being vaccinated.
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   Public health is the government's responsibility. Religion doesn't give people the right to spread disease and make a pandemic worse. 1%, approximately the current covid mortality rate, seems like a small number, but if you catch asymptomatic covid and spread it around, how good do you feel that only 1% of the people you infected died?
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   And the mortality rate among seniors is above 10%. Do you Christians out there love your grandma and grandpa? Then goddamn get vaccinated and stop this "I've got religious reasons" bullshit, because we all know that's what it is. WWJD? He'd get vaccinated because spreading potentially fatal diseases is anti-Christian.
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   Most people are hyperbolically ignorant of what SARS-Cov-2 can do even when it doesn't kill you. Those claiming concerns about what so far are fictional long term vaccine risks are ignoring actual covid risks that are already well established. 23% of covid patients experience long haul symptoms, which are symptoms that only appear a month or more later. Vaccinated people who experience breakthrough infections have long haul symptoms at about half that rate. Even people who were asymptomatic can later experience long haul symptoms. Some of the more significant long haul symptoms include:
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   • Autoimmune disorder (immune system attacks the body) This one's pretty bad. It can attack the kidney or liver, forcing transplants and a lifetime of taking immunosuppressive drugs.
   • Loss of taste and/or smell
   • Chronic fatigue
   • Brain fog
   • Heart inflammation
   • Chronic cough
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5. Individuals should have the right to proselytize in public spaces regardless of anti-solicitation ordinances.
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   It seems that houses of worship just aren't enough. The entire non-private world should be religion's house of worship so that in any public space they can hold services, bris, baptisms, shahadas, communions, salats, confirmations, mantras, Bible, Quran and Bagavad Gita studies, chanting, or just throw down the mat any old place and pray toward Mecca. And since Christians are so insistent that atheism is a religion, atheists should get all these same rights to intrude into the public spaces, and they should get tax exempt status.
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6. Individuals should have the right to proselytize in semipublic spaces like shopping malls and baseball stadiums.
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   And airports. Let's not forget airports, which the Supreme Court ruled are not public spaces a while back. Proselytize in train and bus stations, too. Bring back the Hare Krishnas, we all know how enjoyable that was to get accosted by a Hare Krishna while trying to make your way to your next flight. It should be even more fun now that we also have all the covid restrictions.
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7. Teacher-led prayer should be permitted in public schools.
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   Yes, of course. Answer is along similar lines as before. It's important that sincere and devout Christian teachers in public schools in the heart of rural Mississippi lead Muslim (Shiite and Sunni), Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Native American (all tribes), and Australian aboriginal prayers. And sure, Christian prayers, too, why not. There should be some time for actual teaching somewhere near the end of the day.
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8. Student-led prayer should be permitted at public school assemblies.
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   Answer is along similar lines as before. It should be a lot of fun to witness a school assembly full of young wholesome Christians listening respectfully (as I'm sure they will) to Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Baháʼí and Native American prayers.
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   Why, you Christians ask, would it make any sense to recite prayers of non-Christian religions to an assembly full of Christians? Because non-Christians will often be present. But then you ask, why should Christians be subjected to non-Christian prayers? Why do you not ask the reverse question: why should non-Christians be subjected to Christian prayers?
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   And would it be a problem for you Christians if it were a Catholic prayer, perhaps about grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone? You evangelical Christians don't think you should have to listen to such a prayer, do you?
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   So what you evangelical Christians actually want is a religious state where only your particular brand of Christianity is practiced and all the rest can just go hide in their corners and cry in their soup and the hell with religious freedom, which, by the way, the Supreme Court has held includes not just the freedom to practice one's religion, but also the freedom from having other religions imposed upon you.
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9. Business owners should have a religious right to refuse service to customers on the basis of gender.
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   Absolutely! And in no time there'll be tons of men's only clubs of all types.
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10. Business owners should have a religious right to refuse service to customers on the basis of race.
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    The author of the quiz seems to believe there's a religious foundation to racism, but oh sure, why not? The Jim Crow era, that was the pinnacle of American civilization.
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11. Pharmacists should have a religious right to refuse to sell contraceptive products to customers.
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    Apparently the author of the quiz believes there are evangelical Christian pharmacists out there stocking their shelves with contraceptive products that they then refuse to sell. He must believe they're very poor businessmen.
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    I think what he meant to say is that pharmacists should have the religious right to refuse to *stock* contraceptive products for customers.
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12. Houses of worship should be exempt from zoning regulations.
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    The quiz's author definitely has a agenda. Federal law already states that zoning laws cannot overly burden churches, but just seeing this issue raised led me to think that churches must be the victims of antagonistic zoning laws. Guess what? Surprise of surprises, that's not the case. Churches fight zoning laws all the time when their exemption requests are turned down. Some they win, some they lose.
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    And those who really think churches should be exempt from zoning regulations, say you live in a normal neighborhood and your house is next to an empty lot. Do you really want a congregation to claim they're exempt from zoning laws and build a church right next door? You do? Really? Give it a little more thought, because it could be a mosque, you know. Still okay with it?
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13. Religious organizations should be exempt from employment anti-discrimination laws.
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    Boy, you religious people are a fine bunch. Those of you who think this a good idea, what if your church won't build a wheelchair ramp for your Aunt Edna and says they don't have to because they're exempt from anti-discrimination laws? How do you feel now? Or say your Uncle Fred lost out on a cleaning contract on a building owned by the local mosque because they don't do business with white people. How do you feel now?
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    Whoever wrote these stupid questions that are built around religion assumes that its just Christians against insufficiently religious liberals. It's not. There are rafts of different religions out there, and any rights granted Christianity have to be granted to all other religions, too.
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14. Religious organizations should be exempt from workplace safety regulations.
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    God, can these questions get any more stupid? For the answer to that question, see #25.
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15. Religious exemptions from vaccination mandates should be allowed under any circumstances.
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    See answer to #4.
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16. Religious exemptions from vaccination mandates should be allowed if medical exemptions are allowed.
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    So because some people are medically exempt from the vaccine because they're alergic, religious exemptions should be allowed, too?
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17. Individuals should have a religious right not to work on their holy days.
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    Sure, but I'm curious. How come the Bible Belt has enough people to man retail outlets on Sunday?
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18. Religious organizations should have the same right to apply for government funding that secular organizations have.
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    Same answer as for many of the questions. You Christians out there are thinking that Christian churches should be able to apply for government money, but if Christian churches can do it then churches of all religions can do it. How do you Christians feel about it now knowing that that mosque down the street might be getting government funding to make their dome higher and bigger with thicker gold leaf? Does it still seem like a good idea?
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    And what is this funding that "secular organization" supposedly have access to? What I think of as "secular organizations" is fairly broad: businesses, trade groups, professional organizations, universities, non-profits, charities, etc. Some of them get some government funding (universities apply for research grants), most don't. I don't think the quiz's author thought this through.
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19. Women should have a religious right to obtain an abortion regardless of government restrictions.
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    Say what? I don't think I've ever seen a pro-abortion religious argument.
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20. Indigenous peoples should have a religious right to refuse infrastructure construction on land they deem sacred.
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    Wrong statement. It should be, "Indigenous people should be returned all land stolen from them."
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21. Polygamy should be permitted as a religious right.
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    Statement is phrased too narrowly. Statement should be, "People should have the religious right to ignore any laws that conflict with their religious beliefs." This includes the religious beliefs of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, etc. Doesn't seem like such a slam dunk now, does it?
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22. Publicly traded companies should have religious rights.
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    What does it even mean for a company to have religious rights? And what about private companies? Public companies get religious rights, private companies don't? Again, the quiz's author hasn't thought things through.
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23. Religious organizations should have the right to refuse to cover contraceptive services in their health insurance plans.
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    Wrong statement. The statement should be, "The United States should abandon our system of employer provided health insurance."
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24. For-profit companies should have a religious right to refuse to cover contraceptive services in their health insurance plans.
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    See answer to #22.
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25. There should be a religious right to practice ritual cannibalism.
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    See answer to #21.

The religious right is a powerful force in America, and the phrase "religious right" appears many times in this quiz. Coincidence? I don't think so! --Percy

I have a different answer. It's a story. You may as well ask why Bilbo Baggins gave the ring to Frodo.--Percy

I was suggesting a better issue for the quiz to raise, not stating an opinion.You're personalizing the issue instead of thinking about how we might better provide access to healthcare for the American people. Good advice. I was again suggesting a better issue for the quiz to raise, not stating an opinion.--Percy

Self care first, reduce the A1C, regain your health, and stop using the forum as a distraction from your health issues.Obviously dumb stuff always draws lots of attention, you need attention right now, and so you're posting more and more obviously dumb stuff. Stop posting. Instead, go for a run, check your blood sugar, administer medication, weigh yourself, plan your healthy meals, do yoga, read a book, watch a movie, go out with friends (covid permitting - Colorado has the 8th worst covid case rate in the nation - avoid indoor public places for now - vaccination does not confer immunity).That "religious liberty" quiz was dumb. Let this thread die.--Percy

So let's say you find yourself hungry, homeless and jobless. Liberal programs that would feed you, house you, and find you a job that would put you on the path to self sufficiency are not enough for you. What is it you're looking for, and where are the conservative policies that are providing it?--Percy

We're so lucky to live in the United States because here the homeless are not allowed in places where they can be an annoyance. It's not like India where the homeless and their accumulated detritus are gathered into cardboard structures leaning against the base of the apartment buildings of the middle class where the smell of their excrement wafts up to the floors above. It's so much more pleasant here where the messy consequences of our callousness are hidden away and we can live our lives without thinking about those less fortunate than ourselves. What is the point of believing in God and Jesus if you're only going to end up in hell anyway?--Percy

You've changed your story with this blame of the urban poor. A couple weeks ago it was "drug addicts and blatant criminals" (Message 27). I don't think you have any idea of the situation of the people stealing from your store.Blatant criminals are not stealing from your store and then fencing groceries.Drug addicts have problems separate from poverty.If the only reason the urban poor are stealing from your store and not the urban rich, then the best way to make it stop is to address their poverty. Get them assistance and jobs. Behave like a Christian and give them a helping hand instead of the back of your hand.--Percy

Most of what you've been saying the past few months has been nonsense, so I see little likelihood that you've suddenly lapsed into lucidity. Your claims have already shifted, you're telling an incredible story, and I don't think you have a clue what's going on in your grocery store.$3500/day shrinkage would be 2-3% for a grocery store doing $150,000/day, which looking it up with Google appears to be about average. The categories and percentages of total shrinkage that one supermarket chain reported a few years ago are theft (20%), receiving (11%), damage (5%), retail pricing (4%), accounting errors (3%), and perishables (56%).You definitely are not losing $3500/day to shoplifting. Your management is probably spending their time more profitably working the perishable problem.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Vocabulary.

I do not think you are a blithering idiot. I think precisely what I've said on earlier occasions, that you are unable to anchor what you believe in reality or to connect facts to conclusions, and so you fix randomly on things to believe without rhyme or reason and are an easy mark.That $3500 figure you cited is consistent with that for the average grocery store, but for *total shrinkage* and definitely not for shoplifting all by itself. As a figure for shoplifting it is way too big. At $70,000/day your grocery store appears to be a small one, having about half the sales volume of the average grocery store ($150,000/day). You say your shrinkage is $150,000/month, which comes out to $3780/day (not $3500), and if that's true then your shrinkage (theft, perishables, etc.) percentage is 5.4%, which is enormous, entirely unlikely, unsustainable, unsurvivable.And $3780/day of shoplifting just all by itself, which is what you're actually claiming, is absurd, because there would be at least 2% of so of shrinkage due to other causes, and adding them together results in a number that any grocery store is unlikely to survive.Maybe you do work in a grocery store that doesn't fail despite experiencing impossible financials as well as being plagued by criminals who steal openly and massively without apparent fear of arrest or jail time, but I doubt it. It's much more likely the information you're providing is not accurate.For it's second quarter Kroger's for the first time in its history reported problems with organized crime (see Crime Rings, Big Packs and ‘Mind-Boggling’ Reviews as Kroger Navigates Q2), but they estimate the impact as only a .4% decrease in their bottom line. What you're reporting at your store is massive by comparison. This is from What Is Supermarket Shrink?:

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A spring 2013 study by the University of Florida showed a 2.5 percent supermarket shrinkage rate, which was more than double than the 1.1 percent rate for all retailers.
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Shoplifting accounted for 36 percent of all theft-related shrinkage. While supermarkets do suffer from shoplifting, food products, especially those that are hot or cold, are often more difficult to conceal and steal than general merchandise. Cashiers account for 31 percent of theft and general employees another 25 percent. Vendor theft accounts for the remaining 8 percent of theft-related shrink.

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So that's yet another source making clear that what you're claiming for your store is outlandishly high not just for retailers in general, but even for the supermarket sector with its higher shrink rate than other retailing sectors.So I'd be bonkers to believe your claims of working at a supermarket so far out of the norm. It's much more likely that, consistent with your recent history, you're just way out of touch with reality. You've described your health issues, and we all feel for you, but that doesn't mean we can sit back and provide assent to whatever you say. For the present I'd like to see you take things down a notch and put a bit more emphasis on listening and little less on asserting because you're unable to actually figure anything out and so are reduced to just baldly and baselessly asserting things, which is never a good idea. You replied to me, but you've now gone back to a message from six days ago from Ringo without giving anyone a hint which message it was (for the record, Message 53).Anyway, looking at this now, even you must realize that you were making no sense. It shouldn't need to be explained. Where in the world did Ringo say anything like that? Certainly not in what you quoted, and not in the message you quoted from either. If that's what he actually believes and he said it somewhere then before rebutting it you have to quote it. Right now your comment looks out of the blue. This, too, is out of the blue. And by the way, unless you have a negative salary, you make more than me. Yes, you're veering wildly off-topic. Good God, where do you get this garbage? Our currency is already nationalized and has been for over a hundred and fifty years. All nationalization of the currency means is that the government mints the currency. In almost all nations of the world today it is the government that mints the currency. Seriously, who scared you with this bit of misinformation? What's next? "Omigod, the goverment's gonna nationalize Congress!"Omarova's "reform proposal and thought experiment" for the Federal Reserve to provide banking account services so that no citizen is unbanked is a radical idea that she put out there for discussion. She was highlighting the plight of those disadvantaged by lack of access to banking services, not advocating a policy position. You can stop panicking now.Stop trusting what the Republicans say the Democrats said and vice versa. Listen to what people actually did say.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify one sentence.

Here's a link to Omarova's article about banking: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy. At 60 pages or so it's long. Here's the first paragraph:

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This Article is both a reform proposal and a thought experiment. It is an attempt to come to terms with powerful forces reshaping today’s finance: technological disruption, macroeconomic imbalances, and political demands for broader access to financial services. These forces are redefining how we use and understand money, payments, investments—and what we expect from banks, central banks, and lawmakers entrusted with our collective wellbeing. From a public policy perspective, this ongoing transformation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it renders familiar tools of monetary policy and financial regulation increasingly obsolete and ineffectual. On the other hand, it offers a unique opportunity to correct the inequities and inefficiencies built into the core structures of modern finance. In this sense, the current convergence of deep technological, economic, and political shifts creates a crucial opening for redesigning the financial system.

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Here's the first place where she alludes to the plight of the unbanked. It appears at the end of page 19:

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The Federal Reserve remained noticeably cautious in its CBDC efforts, despite the shifting political context. The U.S. government’s inept pandemic response has exposed the intimate connection between the CBDC idea and the practical need for publicly provided and universally available deposit services. Federal financial aid, meant to help individuals and households to weather the COVID-19 crisis, was unacceptably slow to reach the most vulnerable segments of the population without access to regular banking services. Millions of Americans, especially in poor and minority populated communities, had to wait for a month or more to receive paper checks from the federal government. This “logistical” problem brought into sharp relief both the inexcusable lack of a fast retail payments system and the unacceptably high human cost of being “unbanked” in the United States.

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The CBDC acronym stands for Central Bank Digital Currency. As you can see, she's motivated by a desire to address the delays that plagued efforts at getting pandemic assistance to people without bank accounts, and so she later suggests that the Federal Reserve could provide free banking services.You can now march forward into the future more accurately informed than previously.You don't really believe the things you've said these past few months, do you? You do really care about other people, don't you? You do understand that Republican advocacy of self reliance is just an excuse for heartless callousness and disinterested unconcern, don't you? You do understand how unChristian the Republicans and most politicized Christians are, don't you (you appear to have become an example)? It is clear to you that there's nothing Christian about the things they want to do, isn't it?You've been sounding as heartless as Faith, an endless font of evidence for the way many Christians just aren't very Christian. We could call them CINO's.--Percy