RE: What do you Think About Extreme Vetting?
@soo.chong163, I agree with a lot of what you said. The part you mentioned which concerns me is: "If censorship of ideology detrimental to continuation of a sociocultural identity can not even be established, how can any polity even contemplate expulsion of incompatible people?" and "Control the free flow of information and cultural exchange and the problem of mass migration will end." With those statements, it seems you are in favor of censorship of information and the outlawing of religion. These are two things that I'm fundamentally against as an American, but as far as your comments about the West's meddlesome ways, I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, America's notion that it does what it does for the sake of democracy or the concern for another nation's people is a lie. The truth of the matter is that those two reasons are nothing more than a pretext for conquest and conquer.
What is freedom of religion? Religion is an organised set of belief system that governs and defines a society. Religion functions at a social level as a reference of principles that guides all legal and political institutions. As a deductive form of knowledge, religion and its tenets, are derived from a priori assumptions (ie god or gods) that can not be proven or disproven. Religions are mutually exclusive systems, since the primary assumption of these systems can not coexist with a differing set. How can a society function, when thousand different religions scream to set policies and regulations?
The practical effect of religious "freedom" is to marginalise religion from public sphere and, in essence, outlaw religion from the sociopolitical sphere. Religious freedom can only exist in atheist states, in which political decisions are formed without religious input. Thus, the incompatibility of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all other religious systems with humanist democracy, in which the consensus of state actors become the supreme power, rather than the divine. Religion is already outlawed and censored from public consciousness in humanist secular democracies, other than as a personal fad or philosophical preference. Would formalising such arrangement in legal statutes be too much of a hassle for humanist democracies?
"Religions are mutually exclusive systems, since the primary assumption of these systems can not coexist with a differing set. How can a society function, when thousand different religions scream to set policies and regulations?"
In my country, we have the first amendment to the constitution which says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This phraseology guarantees freedom of, and freedom from religion depending on your perspective. As far as I'm concerned this makes the State more agnostic than it does atheist. However, we're talking about the State here and it's a fictional entity, so, if we ascribe human traits of belief or non-belief to it is an anthropomorphism. If we anthropomorphize the State, in essence, we are making the State a God are we not? And it might be a very jealous God if it "feels" the need to ban all religion. I think an argument can be made that agnosticism is neither belief nor disbelief. I think it's probably most accurate that fictional entities neither believe, nor disbelieve in anything. Whereas atheism is the (religion or) belief system that there is no God.
"Religion is already outlawed and censored from public consciousness in humanist secular democracies, other than as a personal fad or philosophical preference."
If we're talking about America, I don't think so. We have a lot of people from many different religions here. Just so long as they don't break the law or harm people while practicing their religion, it's perfectly fine.
"Would formalising such arrangement in legal statutes be too much of a hassle for humanist democracies?"
There are a lot of people who derive great spiritual benefit from their ability to freely worship. To curtail this in America would cause great upset among the masses. Also what your talking about is banning ideas and the legal right to speak about them. That's a very slippery slope to go down. Once you start, where does it end?