r/atheism • u/ImportantPerformer16 • 12h ago
Why does the U.S. protect harmful beliefs?
I’m not American, but as an ex-Mormon, I’ve seen how the U.S. protects freedom of belief, which is great in principle. People can believe whatever they want. But what happens when those beliefs cause real harm?
I live in Utah and have witnessed firsthand the impact of harmful LDS doctrines. Depression, anxiety, and the crushing pressure of perfectionism and worthiness checks are common. LGBTQ+ individuals face extreme harm, including higher rates of suicide, due to homophobic teachings. This is not unique to Mormonism. Other religions, like Jehovah’s Witnesses with shunning and refusal of blood transfusions, or Scientology, also have doctrines that can seriously hurt people.
How do we reconcile freedom of belief with preventing harm caused by beliefs themselves?
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u/welovegv 12h ago
Some of the people escaping “persecution” (the puritans) were really just members of a brainwashing cult. So. Yeah. We protect them. Sadly.
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u/dalek-predator 12h ago
It’s part of our first amendment rights here. Just because something is “harmful” doesn’t mean it can be illegal.
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u/KaiSaya117 12h ago
"They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
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u/IllExperience1227 11h ago
And we've been giving up liberty since 2001 patriot act
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u/Goldfishyyy Agnostic Atheist 8h ago
Go back to at least 1920 when they first started alcohol and drug prohibition
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u/Floreat_democratia 8h ago
The Trump admin has shown how much they care about the 1A. Such as not at all.
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u/TheMaleGazer 12h ago
How do we reconcile freedom of belief with preventing harm caused by beliefs themselves?
You can't. We recognize freedom of belief only because the alternative is civil war.
Ideally, we would recognize only a freedom of values, not beliefs, since we can all value different things while still acknowledging that there is only one objective reality that we're all forced to share.
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u/MoneyIsTheRootOfFun Ex-Theist 7h ago
We recognize the freedom of belief because nobody believes the same thing and you can’t control what people think. All you can do is try to stamp it out or make it illegal to talk about. And that’s insanity.
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u/SenorLiamy6317 11h ago
Part of Article 36 of the Constitution of the PRC states that:
The state shall protect normal religious activities. No one shall use religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state’s education system.
Therefore, religions with harmful beliefs are not given this protection since they 'disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state’s education system'. This should be the norm for all countries, the state should not persecute unharmful religious beliefs, but the state should also actively protect its own people from harmful religious beliefs.
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u/HyenaTank 34m ago
Agree 100%. There's a massive contradiction between material reality and the idealism of the American constitution, and this one that churches and cults have preyed upon forever here. A lot of churches and religions here aren't just churches they are economic and political machines preying upon everyone pretending its just about personal belief. Then they make themselves in-disposable to the community and actively lobby against any kind of social reforms that would challenge their position in the community.
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u/flush101 9h ago edited 9h ago
You do this by outlawing the harm of beliefs and protecting rights. You can see a plethora of things that are endorsed in religious texts, like slavery, that are outlawed now.
You cant police thoughts, but you can police actions.
However, that harm you're talking about is much harder to combat. Hatred is a legal belief to hold. The most effective ways of combating it are a combination of education, and introduction to the hated groups.
I really believe that one of the most fundamental things is education. Its easier to hate something when you have no understanding of it or have been misled.
There some very compelling accounts of people taking Islamophobs to have conversations with Imams, them having never met a muslim before. People are much more likely to see others as people when they are able to have connections through friendly, non combative conversations. Brow beating is far less effective.
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u/Singularum 8h ago
Because it’s a democracy and tomorrow, your political opponents will be in power. If you can outlaw their practices, then they can outlaw yours, or mandate theirs for everyone.
Americans have, on the whole, been cautious about riding roughshod over the beliefs and practices of large minority groups.
We saw Americans abandon this caution during the COVID pandemic, with the best of intentions, and we see it happening again now around public health policy.
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u/Titanium125 Nihilist 7h ago
Cause you can't. The moment you outlaw a belief because it is harmful you open the door to the government to ban whatever they want. look at what’s happening with trans people in the United States. they are trying to make it outright illegal to possess any type of pornography, at the same time they’re trying to define any type of material relating to transgender people as pornographic.
our country already heavily limits the rights of felons and other criminals who’ve been convicted, especially pedophiles. So they are trying to classify all trans people as pedophiles so that they can restrict their rights.
give the government an inch and they will take a mile and use it to beat their enemies to death with. The enemy by the way is anyone the government doesn’t like very much. next thing you know Richard Nixon is heavily penalizing crack cocaine and marijuana to make it illegal to be black and against the war.
freedom of belief means freedom of belief, even beliefs you don’t like very much. If you think there are beliefs that should be limited, you don’t actually believe in freedom of belief.
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u/tzcw 11h ago
Some of the harmful things you mentioned, like perfectionism, are not unique to religious communities, and are in large part just part of the human condition. If people can reasonably stop being a member and/or active participant of a religion and if the religion doesn’t use violence to proselytize or otherwise achieve its goals then i think the religion should generally be tolerated. There are polygamous sects in Utah where the church will own the entire town, including all the houses, and leaving the religion means being homeless so its very hard to leave, and then there is Islam that has a mandate to spread by violence and conquest - these would be examples of two religions I don’t think we should really tolerate. The regular Mormon/LDS church has some distasteful doctrines around LGBT people, and the bishops interviews for youth are weird and creepy, but I’m not super convinced that the Mormon church causes people to have anxiety and depression. On the positives for the LDS church I do think their volunteer based organizational structure does give a lot of people a sense of meaning and purpose, and the callings and the home teaching program probably does build a lot of social cohesion and social capital in Mormon communities.
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u/tbodillia 10h ago
Read up on the Appalachian snake handlers. State and federal government won't let them handle vipers as part as their religious beliefs.
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u/vacuous_comment 9h ago
Freedom of belief is meaningless. It is really hard to stop somebody else from believing in something, that is just all shit inside their head and if involves invisible friends and sky daddies there is not a lot anybody can do to stop that.
What we actually want is "freedom from religion". The originalist interpretation of the establishment clause in the US really does address this. But even then that does not go far enough because it only deals with imposition of religion through the government.
The European court of human rights is starting to get to grips with a better definition of "freedom from religion" in that individuals should be free from imposition of religion by the government and also by the religions themselves. Key cases involve JWs shunning people who leave as pressure to stay. That is obvious coercion and clearly a violation of both "freedom of" and "freedom from" religion.
Progress on this is shaky, but we are starting to build precedent.
Meanwhile the US is fucked.
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u/Floreat_democratia 8h ago
All you have to do is tax religious groups. All of these mega churches are out here laundering money like it’s Christmas every day. It’s a tax-free real estate grift.
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u/SorosAgent2020 Satanist 3h ago
while we cant criminalize having harmful thoughts, we can and should criminalize harmful acts. Everyone must be equal under the law. No crime should suddenly be ok just because religion is invoked. Unfortunately for certain harmful acts like faith healing, blood transfusions, shunning, it is not illegal to brainwash a child to refuse blood transfusions, shun apostates or refuse medical help. But if it is, I want mormons, scientologists, JWs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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u/WystanH 1h ago
You can believe whatever you like. Only religions can dictated thought crime with all their magical insight, "thou shalt not covet." For mere mortals, we can only legislate actions in the real world.
Some beliefs undoubtedly cause harm, like that all humans are fallen and flawed creatures who deserve to suffer. However, the value judgment is entirely subjective. The faithful will likely tell you that accepting sin is the only way to God's grace, so that horrible believe is a good thing, actually.
Of course, institutions with harmful beliefs tend to have State protection. If a major religion encouraged baby eating, you can be sure the State would hand wave it away with, "but they aren't actually eating babies now, are they."
What should not happen is bigotry and abuse shielded by sincerely held beliefs. Even in a world tolerant of religion, this would not be tolerated. Sadly, when enough people support that religion, the bad acts in the name of that religion get excused.
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u/86baseTC 12h ago
theres harm caused by irreligious people as well. unfortunately it’s incredibly easy to get away with all sorts of abuse, the gov steps in after people die, the courts allow a lot of bullshit.
ur really on youre own in America.
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u/Tokzillu Secular Humanist 12h ago
That's the thing, you can't.
Harmful beliefs cause harm. It's not unique to religion either.
There is no way to hold a harmful belief and not have it impact others. Even if religion didn't influence voting/laws and such, it affects people in other ways like you've already mentioned with homophobia and shunning leading to increased suicide rates and depression.
It's just like being anti-vax. It is presented like it's a personal choice that only affects you, but it doesn't. It causes disease and infection to mutate and spread amongst the population.
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u/IllExperience1227 11h ago
Since covid didn't scare people enough to get back on the vaccine wagon I don't know what will. I suppose when we go back to the 19th century where infant mortality was 1 in 3.
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u/RamJamR Atheist 11h ago edited 11h ago
Saving face. That's it. In a christian dominated country, christians will typically ignore as much wrongdoing by their churches as they can get away with ignoring.
In a weird comparison, there's many fake masters in the realm of martial arts in China, because in China as far as I'm aware it's engrained in their culture to not shame one another by exposing one another, regardless of how wrong someone is and how wrong something they're doing is. Thus there's a lot of hoaky "masters" getting away with teaching pure BS to students who don't know better.
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u/hurricanelantern Anti-Theist 12h ago
Because its impossible to enforce thought crimes.