baphometfan

I believe your tax example reveals your ignorance of the Amish and their place in American society.

My friend, I mean no disrespect but you remind me of a younger me. I was a teenage agnostic, but the politics were too convenient...

I’m sure you want folks to take a medical treatment you believe will help them and others but we live in a diverse society that makes affordances for religious belief as a core pillar of our society.

Whether or not you want that to be so is not germane to the issue of how one, here and now, is presented with an exemption from an otherwise mandatory government edict.

Sure, if you catch them in an lie it’s clear something is amiss. If one argued against Fetal Cell development and asked off for an abortion (or used some other product) then you get to mail them to the proverbial cross.

Now, how much time must elapse before a religious change is true and sincere? A hard question to determine. For many, all it takes is a rock bottom moment in their life.

Who is to say the social security number is or isn’t the mark of the beast?

I’ve yet to hear of anyone kicked out of a store in the western liberal order for lack of one. On the other hand, the Covid shot yes. You’re perhaps forgetting one of the key elements to the story is not just “a mark” but that it is required for your ability to operate in life.

That my undocumented school mates had no trouble getting by in life and attaining meaningful work post graduation would contraindicate the SSN being “the mark,” it wasn’t required to rhat degree.

Then again someone may come along and argue IT IS the mark but they just haven’t finished implementing that system yet.

Interpretation of religious texts is fun that way.

All in all, it’s not anyone’s place to play religious scholar with anyone else’s belief system or to demand hard proof either. Personally, I haven’t found a sect that really matches with my reading and understanding of scripture. So how do you validate that?

As for the second, no one said the “mark” has to be a literal mark. Many sects of many religions view large parts of scripture as allegorical or good general teachings for a coherent (if not imperfect, particularly based on modern secular norms) society.

No to be overly accusatory, but this all reminds me a bit of a young, agnostic me. The “well what about turning the other cheek” type of gotcha comment that ignores scripture that provides deeper context or contextual “contradiction.”

We live in a large and diverse world, and religion is ultimately a human system. We’re just never going to be able to nail it down to an instruction set as we may desire to do.

I work remote for a small firm and so have never grappled with the issue of a religious exemption, but a close friend did at his Federal contractor employer:

- Fetal Cell Tissue, apparently there is some use of it in the development pipeline such that quite a few contemporary religions can use that as an out.

- Mark of the Beast, given how forceful government have been (varying on location), one could make the argument that this represents the Revelations concept of being forced into some system of submission to Satan in order to live and so it is their duty as good Christians to resist this.

Regarding the first point, I’m not sure if any other DOD related vaccines fall into this category but one could argue their religious beliefs came after their initial military indoctrination.

Regarding the second point, the existence of a religious exemption somewhat weakens the argument but then again one could claim that the battle against Satan is ongoing and the system incomplete.