Grand Duke Imam Mahdi wrote on Jun 28^th, 2014 at 1:55pm:


many blessings

you portray an air of distinction

.....at least half of it ,

carry on regardless

namaste

- ; ) =

The Huffington Post  | By Yasmine Hafiz
Posted: 06/25/2014 12:28 pm EDT

The United Kingdom government has banned the teaching of creationism as a scientific theory in free schools and academies, which are the equivalent of a 'public' school in the United States. The move was done in the interests of having a "broad and balanced curriculum," according to UPI.

The remarkable decision was part of a document published on June 9th that laid out new clauses for church academies and stated that creationism is not widely accepted as a scientific theory.

The clauses said that creationism:

Quote:


For the purposes of this document, creationism is defined as, "any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution."

Pavan Dhaliwal, head of public affairs for the British Humanist Association, told Politics UK, "Coupled with the fact that maintained schools must follow the national curriculum, which from September will include a module on evolution at the primary level, we believe that this means that the objectives of the campaign are largely met."

Thousands of schools in America that received public funding still teach creationism as an "alternative" to evolution, according to Slate. Such practices clearly have an impact on the country, as a recent Gallup poll showed that over 40% of Americans hold the creationist belief that God created humanity as it currently exists a mere 10,000 years ago.

To start with, who else is off the hook, or will be? What other companies can ignore which other laws on what real or dreamed-up religious grounds? That is something the majority decision in Hobby Lobby leaves shockingly undefined. Ginsburg called it “a decision of startling breadth,” one that could allow for-profit corporations to “opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Alito, in his opinion, denies this; so does Anthony Kennedy, in a concurrence. But neither does so persuasively: their reassurance about the protections against what Ginsburg calls “the havoc the Court’s judgment can introduce” come down to, in Alito’s case, shrugs about how nothing alarming has shown up on the Court’s docket yet and, in Kennedy’s, the belief that everyone will be sensible about this. But if there hasn’t been a wave of cases there also hasn’t been a precedent like this—and now there is. And good sense has never been much of a reliable restraint. This suggests that the majority is either being disingenuous about how broad its ruling is or is blind to its own logic. As Ginsburg notes, religious objections to, say, vaccines are neither as theoretical nor as easily put aside as the majority pretends.

Can a for-profit corporation even have religious beliefs

—can it be a person acting out of sacred conviction, in the sense of either the First Amendment or the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (a law Hobby Lobby cites)? Alito doesn’t see why not; it doesn’t seem fair to him that the owners of a business should have to forgo either identifying its religious rights with their own “or the benefits, available to their competitors, of operating as corporations.” But corporations create a legal separation between owners and businesses that protects them in many ways; why is the upside a presumptive right and not any downside?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2014/06/a-very-bad-ruling-on-hobby-lobby.html

Citizens United, the gift that keeps on giving…

 

"A federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was written to protect individuals’ religious freedoms — and on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that, under RFRA, corporations count as people: their religious freedoms also get protection."

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/30/5857158/the-supreme-court-ruling-in-three-sentences

http://lineartocircular.tumblr.com/post/90360249173/the-supreme-courts-hobby-lobby-ruling-in-three

Anyone who believes that Hobby Lobby should be allowed to control what their employees can cover on their health plan because of “deeply held Christian beliefs” by the CEO should also believe that a company owned by Muslims should be allowed to treat their employees with Sharia law.

http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnews.com/2014/03/if-hobby-lobby-wins-whats-next-islamic-law.html/

A funny thing is that the 'progressives', while stringently anti-religious, adopt a number of Christianity's tenets in their utopian vision.

Now, of course, a huge number of American companies outsource labor to China, and thus help prop up this shameful status quo. But very few of these American companies simultaneously trumpet themselves as "Christian businesses," arguing in court that providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. How can this ObamaCare mandate be so foul to Hobby Lobby executives, while they say very little about Chinese policies forcing women to have abortions against their wills? Is abortion wrong only when the terminated life is American?

The most glaring inconsistency between Hobby Lobby's ethical proclamations and its business decisions concerns the matter of religious liberty. The craft store chain is hailed by conservatives as standing up to Uncle Sam and fighting for religious freedom. Yet Hobby Lobby imports billions of dollars worth of bric-a-brac from a nation that denies 1.35 billion citizens freedom of worship.

If Hobby Lobby was concerned with religious freedoms — not just those of conservative American Christians — it would quit doing business in China.

http://theweek.com/article/index/263225/stop-calling-hobby-lobby-a-christian-business