Why isn’t there a legal definition of religion?
I have always been curious of why the Supreme Court has made rulings based on arguments for or against religious Rights issues, yet there is no legal definition to define the parameters of what religion is or is not.
The Chicago Tribune article titled, Role of Christian school’s spurs debate, reports parents concerns about secular values being taught in public schools that differ from their religious values.
The Purpose of This Post
To propose a simple solution to provide a legal definition of religion in order to determine the differences between religious or political entities or issues. Issues that may drive anger, hatred, killing based on the absence of a legal definition to address contemporary times of our Nation.
King Solomon,
Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. (Proverb 1:8)
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverb 18:21)
What’s My Point?
If anyone attempts to understand the legal definition of religion, I recommend you read the Cornell Law Review, Defining Religion in the First Amendment: A Functional Approach, in the Source Links below.
The law review is mind boggling in my opinion. What is needed instead of attempting to provide a legal definition of what religion is, we should just define what a religion is not to avoid discerning any interpretations of millions of pages of religious literature, word, verses, that exist.
I believe the best, simple, common sense way to define a legal definition of religion should have one primary legal requirement test.
For Example,
Any entity may not be legally defined as a religion that condones, teaches, or requires a member to engage in any practices to kill or physically harm any living human being to comply with dogma or precept for a deity.
Any beliefs that do not concur with the above requirement will be considered political entities and not religious entities.
As for all the other sad foolish actions people may engage in, or believe, the actions must be judged in accordance to the Constitution same as any court rulings of the USA. That includes any IRS or SCOTUS existing tests for religious qualifications already established.
It would be an even greater folly to allow tax deductions or school vouchers for any religion that teaches or condones killing another human being or harming anyone for not being a member of any religion.
As for a minimum requirement for a religious school to qualify for school vouchers, I see no reason why the government should not have minimum guidelines of subject requirements to be taught and maintained in order to obtain school vouchers.
I am not a lawyer but believe the above simple qualifications can easily be reworded to any legal terms wording.
As for how to enforce this requirement would be simple. If someone makes a complaint and can prove a religious entity is teaching or promoting killing or harming a human being, the courts will decide the same as any other lawful complaint.
In the event of a court verdict of guilty of killing or harming a human being based on evidence of being taught by a person teaching or promoting the act for a religious belief, would be considered an accomplice and liable for the act including financial penalties or compensation to victims’ relatives or estate.
In My Opinion
In the USA, religious institutions are granted tax exemptions. A school choice, or school vouchers movement to return choice for parents to decide what moral values they believe to be in the best interests to teach their children instead of government morality choices.
It would be folly to allow an entity to teach or promote killing another human being to be eligible to obtain taxpayer funds.
It would be impossible a task and a travesty absent a legal definition of religion to hat enables any school to teach in the name of religion that killing a human being would be rewarded by a deity.
In other words, it is time to define religion vs. a political entity.
If Interested,
Read the Source Links below which includes an interesting debate on this subject in two Citizen Tom blog and the comments.
You Decide
Who should be responsible to choose what moral values should be taught to their children, parents or government?
If you could afford to send your children to a private religious school because of school vouchers, would you?
Do you agree with the above King Solomon proverb, that a tongue has the power of life or death based on the history of past religious wars?
Regards and good will blogging.
Source Links
Chicago Tribune
Cornell Law Review
Religion Definition
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
Deity Definition
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deity
Citizen Tom Posts
Previous Post
https://rudymartinka.com/2017/07/10/king-solomon-time-to-outlaw-an-islam-religion-practice-post-ten/
Rudy u Martinka 
@Scatterwisdom
Thanks for the links.
Defining religion is not especially easy. Atheism is a religion, but most Atheists will deny it.
The legal definition of religion depends upon agenda of who defines the word. People are too inclined to put forward their own concerns.
To some extent, I think judges have avoided defining religion for fear the definition would become a tool for violating the First Amendment. Imagine the problem of belonging to a religion that is arbitrarily defined as not being a religion.
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@Tom,
Atheism is not a religion based on the word definition of religion being belief in a deity of which the atheists refuse to believe.
You stated, “The legal definition of religion depends upon agenda”
I agree an agenda can be applied as a choice of word to define religion beliefs whether compiled in a Bible or what or where ever? However, there are supposedly 100 religions in the world, yet any agenda that includes a belief of killing humans for a deity needs to be recognized and addressed.
I frankly do not care if the USA hurts any people’s religious feelings that want to kill me to please their deity or their political agendas.
My suggestion only has one test to differentiate religious beliefs from political agendas, and that same stipulation already is recognized to be legal in the USA. It is illegal to kill a fellow human being rf a person does it for anger, hatred, money, jealousy, etc. etc.?
Why not apply the same legality to any belief that it is somehow a holy duty to kill a human because of a belief that is illegal in the USA?
If ever school choice or school vouchers is debated in Congress, I doubt it would ever pass if a relies belief to kill another human is going to be taught or funded by taxpayers.
Same for tax breaks which for all we know is being extended to a private religious school now teaching it is holy to kill another human to obtain a heavenly reward by a deity.
Regards and good will blogging.
.
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@Scatterwisdom
The government is under no obligation to pay for children to be taught to be seditious or murserous. That could include a political as well as a religious ideology. Someone could pass it off as science. The problem is the effect of the belief, not the source.
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@Tom,
I am not sure I understand your point about “the effect of the belief, not the source.”
For example, if a terrorist bomber effects a bombing that ends up killing innocent humans to obtain a heavenly reward, someone surely must have taught the bomber to believe in a religious belief that he or she would be rewarded by a deity.
In todays’ world, the average yearly cost per student to be taught in a public school can range from 8,000 to 13,000 dollars a year.
A private school expenses will not be much less or significant.
The funds are paid by taxpayers their whole life whether they have children or not in school.
In other words, a very small percentage of people with three children would be able to pay 24 to 39 thousand dollars a year for 12 years plus college costs.
Without government taxation for everyone the USA education as we now know it would not be possible.
So, if school vouchers were offered to parents to choose a private religious school that teaches students to become a suicide bomber that was paid for by taxpayers and funded through government.
In my opinion, school vouchers will never pass in Congress unless there is a legal definition of religion decided.
Regards and good will blogging.
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@Scatterwisdom
Actually the public schools are significantly more expensive. What the public schools advertise as their costs are their operating costs. That excludes things like capital costs.
Consider the example you gave. There are various reasons someone might give for being a terrorist. Doesn’t have to be religious. A political ideology like communism or anarchism would support it. The point is to forbid the use of government funds to teach children to be terrorists.
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@Tom,
Your reply appears to agree with the main point of my post.
For example, you stated,
“Actually, the public schools are significantly more expensive. What the public schools advertise as their costs are their operating costs. That excludes things like capital costs”.
Even the costs of private schools were halved, it would still not be affordable in our contemporary times for most families to pay for schooling in the USA if it were not for government taxation for everyone for their whole life.as is now even when they either have no children or are in old age.
You stated
“Consider the example you gave. There are various reasons someone might give for being a terrorist. Doesn’t have to be religious. A political ideology like communism or anarchism would support it. The point is to forbid the use of government funds to teach children to be terrorists.”
Using terrorists as an example, we have experienced terrorist acts from American citizens born in the USA, and schooled in a religious belief with writings that include a duty to kill or conquer infidels, people not of their faith.
Perhaps that teaching made it easier for them to be brainwashed by an internet source, or acquaintance to engage in the terrorist actions.
Because the government provides tax subsidies to all religions, the religious school or church, temple, etc. is being partially funded by USA taxpayers.
My Point being the same as you stated, the teaching is a political dogma protected under a dogma umbrella identified as a religion.
I personally think it is foolish in event of school vouchers to provide school choice to be given to a school that teaches it is a duty to a deity to kill an infidel.
In other words, there must me a legal definition of a religion to prevent school vouchers from helping to support a political belief under the umbrella of a religious belief.
That would apply even if everyone could afford to send their children to a private school that teaches any duty to a deity to kill a human being.
The writers of the Bill of Rights did not intend to protect any religion that teaches this dogma. That is why we have to have a legal definition for SCOTUS to make a ruling to forbid any government funds from used as a school voucher or a tax break to a political entity calling themselves a religion.
Regards and good will blogging.
PS Sorry to keep bringing back my point. The reason I am doing so is because if I cannot convince you, a self-admitted skeptic, I doubt my argument for a need for a legal definition will ever be considered meaningful to differentiate religious beliefs from political beliefs when teaching children…
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@Scatterwisdom
In a free society government exists to tell us things we should not do because it violates the rights of others. When government tells us what to do, we begin to cede our choices — our freedom — to the government. Hence government does not need to define religion. It just needs to prohibit terrorism.
The reason you see a problem with school vouchers is that even school vouchers puts government in the role of making our choices for us.
We just need to privatize education. Charities will take up the slack.
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Tom
While I agree with your ideals, I also believe that this world is filled with schemers who figure out how to take advantage of any person or opening they can.
We already have millions of laws to attempt to control the schemers and intriguers because reality requires that we must to protect ourselves..
Been that way since the beginning of time, nothing new under the sun, and I doubt it will ever change in the future.
Regards and good will blogging.
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@Scatterwisdom
There is that quote from Lord Acton
We tend to assume politicians will do what we elected them to do, but the more power we give them the less control we have over them, and the more control they have over us. As you say, the “world is filled with schemers who figure out how to take advantage of any person or opening they can.”
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Not certain you understand my proposal is not to givo power to a politician, but to restrict power from a religious or fanatic leader.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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Tom,
I believe this Pat Roberson one-minute video may add weight to support my point.
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Rudy,
Perhaps religion is like Justice Potter Stewart’s statement about hard core pornography, that it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.
The whole school debate thing, I find uninteresting. If the goal we agree on is that every American child should be afforded minimum education, then how we get there is of little importance to me. Education has changed dramatically and become far more egalitarian since the 18th Century. Given the increasingly rapid pace of change, one can only assume that education, like every other area of our lives, will continue to change in ways that we may control and in ways that are unpredictable. The only thing that is certain, absent some apocalypse, is that we are unilikely to go back to the family and community model of our 17th Century past. Have you considered the bigger picture?
In the 17th Century, an individual was nothing. Every individual relied upon his family and his community for everything from work to education to child care to health care to status. A child without a family or some community organization like a church to belong to was likely to be subjugated to the most desperately lowest of levels of society, forced into virtual enslavement, crimality or prostitution. For a 17th Century person, his status in society was decided at birth by family and sex. Education, given to men of a certain status only, was taken care of by the family. Employment and marriage was a family determination. If you got sick, your family took care of you.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and we have been atomized. We still have the nuclear family but it quickly falls apart as the child matures and goes off, often to the other end of the country, where he or she then starts a new nuclear family. We have this illusion of individuality, but if we look at where everything in our western consumerist society comes from, we really only have two choices: state or commercial business.
Our education comes from either the state or a private business. Our jobs come from either the state or a private interprise. If we get sick, we either have state or commercially provided healthcare. When we get old our children may take us in, but that is only if we have failed to secure our golden years through either the state or commercial enterprises, and even then, because our children have to work, we are likely to end up in a nursing home paid for by medicaid.
Republicans prefer that all of us be taken care of through consumerist enterprises. Democrats prefer governmental social safety nets. The reality is a mix of both. The complaint from Republicans is that government is too coercive. The complaint from Democrats is that share holder value and profit/loss calculations are too heartless. Both have a point, and are missing the point by refusing to see that both sides are right and both options may suck in some way, but there is no going back.
Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, etc. are rapidly shaping things in ways that will soon make our current arguments seem naive. A Chinese researcher just created the first genetically engineered child. How long do you think it will be before we are engineering longer living, super intelligent, super fit, calmer and more confident, disease free humans? They are already making mice that live longer and are smarter. How long do you think it will be before robots replace every type of work? I expect airline pilots, my old job, will be done by drones before I die. China is leading the world right now in AI investment and drone technology. They are stealing as much as they are developing and inventing. The question isn’t whether government or corporate billionaires should control our lives. Nope, if we don’t catch up to the real issues and quit arguing about these issue, by the time we wake up, the real question will already have been decided about which ones. Another question is how quickly it will be before we replace current humanity with something that will look back on us now as a lower life form than we now consider chimpanzees.
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tsalmon. tom
Thanks for your reply.
I do not disagree in your general statements of the differences of the 17th century to today,. One of the problems of my post is the reality the USA Constitution basic premise is individual freedom.
My concern is when the Bill of Rights was written, it stated freedom to choose religion and basically a hands-off instruction not to interfere with religion,
However, other countries are not the same as the USA and somehow terrorist’s belief in killing themselves and innocent people along with them is still around.
If we continue to do nothing to prevent their religious belief to kill innocent people, we are fools.
My proposal is a simple way to prevent teaching in the USA any ancient beliefs to protect innocent people from becoming victims of an ancient religious belief which may even include USA government tax breaks or future school vouchers being used to promote killing under the umbrella of religion.
The issue is not something we can continue to not be concerned with because religion will never disappear in the future regardless of any technology or politics.
Why won’t it disappear is another question which does not have to be answered.
The only thing that needs to be answered, is what is the legal definition of religion to help prevent more people from becoming victims of people being taught killing someone will result in a deity giving them a reward.
Will my proposal be one hundred percent effective to stop a terrorist in the future, I doubt it,
But at least it may help prevent more terrorists and allow people who teach terrorists to be considered accomplices and prevent from influencing others to become terrorists?
Regards and good will blogging.
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I see what you mean Rudy and I think your goal is commendable, but in essentially allowing the government define and exclude a belief that is obviously religiously inspired as not religion, then we are both “establishing” a government religion and hurting “free exercise” at the same time. Sometimes there is a good reason why SCOTUS does not go any further than they need to for the case at hand. It’s problably good for us to exercise some of the same discretion when making new laws or passing amendments to limit religion.
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tsalmon, tom,
I suppose I must have a simple simple mind because I believe in the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” needs to be legal rather than ignored because we are afraid to define what some people believe may be okay if some religious cleric cleric or radical believes God wants someone to die because of their religious beliefs are not the same as his.
Oh well
Regards and good will blogging.
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Tom,
Thanks for thy link. I need to think more on your post before I comment.
Regards and good will blogging.
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Nice
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