I find the appeal to religious freedom contemptible. An animal does not suffer any less if it has to be conscious during its slaughter for religious reasons, rather than secular ones.
There's just no easy line to draw otherwise between "because religion" and any other personal desire. It's not an appeal to any logic or meaning or external truth or specialness or benefit of humankind or world etc. But it's become this magic phrase that causes us to pause and consider requests that would otherwise be automatically denied on their own ground.
[1] Just to be clear, I am not talking about this specific case, there is no majority here, but about the general case where a majority has some unreasonable ideas.
Of course a sufficiently large majority can just ignore that.
But religious people are increasingly not the majority in Europe, certainly not the ones that demand special animal abuse privileges.
This is like saying that when you read "because science tells us" that you translate it to "because I believe anything that scientists say" as that is what is effectively happening.
I've been atheist all my life and it took Me 30 years to get beyond my own cultural conditioning and allow myself to To think "religion is not special belief above all others". Still sounds like a sacrilege even to me and I have to fight the instinct to give it special privilege mentally and automatically.
Note that most other protected features are assumed to be ingrained and largely immutable for the purpose of the law (race, age, etc). The law treats religion the same, as opposed to personal choice that it is like all others. One of my light-bulb moments was when I started replacing phrase "Christian /Muslim / Etc child" with "child of Christian / Muslim / Hindu /etc parents". We should not pretend we do not have agency and freedom of belief... And thus be judged upon that chosen belief like all others.
"I want to hurt that animal / abuse women / disrespect others /etc" should be treated no differently whether suffixed by "because religion" or "because I want to".
As a society we have long come to the conclusion that, for good or bad, limiting religious expression leads do disastrous consequences.
That doesn't mean that religion should have free reign (we have for example long decided that church and state should be separate), but any change of the status quo needs to go largely through general social agreement, not mandated from first principles.
Freedom of conscience is a tricky thing. There are a lot of things that one person might see as falling under that while another might see as affecting the rights of some third party.
If I want to murder an animal in particular way, wear a hat for license photo, take time off work, interact with people in a specific way, get exceptions or accommodations in workplace, restaurants, schools, public institutions, or do any number of things that may or may impact others, for any number of arbitrary and capricious reasons, I may receive a negative answer. But that answer changes solely because I append "because my religion tells me so".
My method reminds me there isn't actually some different less arbitrary reasoning automatically worth of respect and consideration. I just really want it.
In other words, I am not claiming (here) religion is more arbitrary. I am saying it is no less arbitrary, and due to my cultural conditioning and social norms in Western world, it takes conscious effort to remind myself of that.
My method for putting things in perspective though, is that when people say "let me do this because of my deeply held religious beliefs", on its own and with no other supporting arguments, that should hold no more, and no less, sway than "I really really want it" (and again, that takes me some work, because emotionally I too am conditioned to give religion extra sway and credit, with no supportive reason I can come up with, hence the need for internal conscious translation)
I am eager to hear non circular arguments otherwise.
Edit: semi jokingly but completely seriously: I am willing to grant another "really" for each instance of "deep",e.g.:
I want this due to my religious beliefs = I really want this
I want this due to my deep religious beliefs = I really really want this
I want this due to my particularly deeply held deep religious beliefs = I really really rreaaallly want it.
Again it comes down to religion in actuality being a personal choice and decision rather than immutable property beyond person's control. Any argument of immutability tend to become circular and refer to specific religion itself.
Why would religious beliefs be special?
With regard to your more general point that those desire are not exceptionally strong and involve conflicts - sure, notwithstanding me arguing against this in this specific case, I will grant you that, this is certainly possible. But I am not sure that you could make this point in the general case, I do not see why there could not be strong religiously motivated desires without conflicts.
Finally and notwithstanding the points above, I still think we are focusing to much on the really, really aspect. I do not think that the focus of the original comment was on the strength of the desire but on the lack of rational justification.
If There are people who demand certain level of cruelty upon living beings, whether animals or people, "I really want it" and "I choose a framework of ethics that demands / enables me to do it" and "voices told me to do it" and "I persuaded myself it's ok" and "I choose religion that tells me to do it" boil down to equivalent statements.
You are making a statement that religion excuses people from cruel actions and I will fight you to end of the earth on that one.
Well then you completely misunderstood me
I've re-read your post several times.
"Religious prescription makes it possible for otherwise not cruel people to make animals suffer. Blurring the distinction is not helpful or smart in any way."
I think there exist valid distinctions; e.g. a vet who needs to make an animal suffer temporary pain while providing long term relief is an important distinction.
However, what I've put forward is that currently, we are giving TOO much credit and distinction for people who desire cruelty upon animals (and many other things) due to religion alone; vs other arbitrary personal desires and preferences. I think we need to blur that distinction, or support it with something else than "because religion".
In other words, to me:
Group A: Inflicts temporary pain to animals for purpose of long term relief or some other quantifiable objective benefit to something or somebody somewhere
Group B: Inflicts pain to animals for no good reason / for enjoyment of cruelty / for fun / for religion. I deny your claim that people who desire harm upon animals for religious reasons alone, are "otherwise not cruel people". I think "Cruel" is precisely what they are, and I deny them using religion as valid ethical excuse that means anything else than "because I wanted to", because religion is freely chosen and freely obeyed and we remain agents of free will. Or to put it another way - what about humans? If people want to harm other humans for only religious reasons, are we still treating them as "otherwise not cruel"?
I'm willing to listen what your alternative hypothesis/point/statement is - why are people who desire cruelty upon animals for religious reasons alone "not otherwise cruel", or how DO you narrowly define cruelty then?
(and again, it took me personally 30 years to stop giving religion a culturally-conditioned, social-norms free pass on these things; and I still have to fight this ingrained reflex to not instinctively believe that "because religion" is a superior reason to "because I want to". I don't expect anybody else to make that journey in 15 minutes debating internet strangers even if they want to).
[Final note: IF your point is more along the lines of "we should understand the details of reasoning and motivations", absolutely; but I did not see that line of reasoning in your original post. My point is I see no moral distinction or superiority between "because religion" and "because I want to", and one should not be given more credence than the other -- which is not to deny that understanding the motivations in detail is a useful and positive effort]
That aside, what exactly are we actually arguing about? Are we discussing religion as a justification? Are we discussing who is to blame? The special status of religion? It seems to me that the positions of the people in this thread might actually be quite close together, but that everyone is just arguing about a somewhat different point.
Of course it doesn't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviours by assigning blame to the correct source of the behaviour. I case of religion it makes sense to assign blame to religion instead of treating people as cruel, since the way to remove the source of suffering is through removing religion itself, not the cruelty of the person (since the cruelty is likely not present).
That merely pushes recursion one quick and easy level further. As an individual with agency, you choose to adopt and obey a particular religion. You "want to". It should not excuse you from your actions or give extra special credence to your demands.