301. In God, Distrust

Comment #40297 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 5:10 am

Complete the half-finished Jewish script?

Well I found it funny!

302. Atheism in America

Comment #40280 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 4:36 am

But more to the point yes, what a sad story. What a wonderful girl as well, I certainly didn't have that kind of courage when I was that age. . . or athletic ability . . .or musical ability . . .

303. Atheism in America

Comment #40278 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 4:33 am

Oh, and thunderous applause is definitely due to the Pastor's wife's defense: 'Our kids are good Christian kids - they wouldn't do that...'

I remember on the news -quite a few years back now- a man (think he was a doctor) was supected to have sexually assaulted several patients(I think). And they got the local vicar on the news to say, "This is ridiculous and outrageous, this man is a good churchgoing christian so he wouldn't do anything of the sort!"

I trust the police dropped the investigation forthwith . . .

304. Let us pray for the soul of Richard Dawkins

Comment #40259 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 3:34 am

ridelo she refers to this I think:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,1018,God----in-other-words,-Ruth-Gledhill-Religion-Correspondent

305. Let us pray for the soul of Richard Dawkins

Comment #40253 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 3:24 am

So Cristina doesn't your Catholic faith forbid remarriage after divorce? Well you just continue picking out the bits you like eh:-)

306. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #40248 by BaronOchs on May 14, 2007 at 2:58 am

this thread's becoming a good education:-)

307. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #40034 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 6:55 pm

Ha! V I found the trojan horse one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig

LMAO!!! "check inside before you let it in!" lolololol!!!

definitely watch more of them!

Well I'm not sure what the best general introduction to church history is, but I can ask some people I know and get back to you.

308. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39965 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 12:04 pm

Bonzai, she's on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popess_Joan

but there's no strong evidence she actually existed. A history teacher told me once that after the Joan incident they started crowning popes on a chair with a hole in the seat, so a priest could take a quick grope to check, before it was too late! I think he was pulling my leg somehow!

309. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39941 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 11:06 am

http://youtube.com/watch?v=b3PyoUPcobA&mode=related&search=


uhh uhh oh just imagine how impoverished we'd all be without religion!

310. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39940 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 10:56 am

elfinabout god I was getting depressed watching westboro baptist church on youtube. But this cheered me up:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=S8cN2pB3MCE&mode=related&search=

Aware as I am of the irony in reacting to intolerance intolerantly I wouldn't blame anyone for lynching them. Also I have family in the military and if I ever saw one of those protests at a funeral I'd bayonet them all myself.

311. Ted Haggard Is Completely Heterosexual

Comment #39937 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 10:49 am

pewkatchoo he was pastor of a mega-church in colorado springs, and leader of the 30million member national union of evangelicals. He had a sharp exchange with Dawkins in the root of all evil, supposedly had a telephone conference with the whitehouse every week and was a strong opponent of gay marriage.

But it all went tits up when it emerged he'd been doing meth and screwing this guy.

312. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39909 by BaronOchs on May 12, 2007 at 8:58 am

Allright V I welcome this invitation into the fascinationg and complex world of church history!

Celibacy was favoured right from the start, see for instance 1 Corinthians 7:7-9.

But not absolutely required, this, from Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm gives an idea:

St. Cyril of Jerusalem urges that the minister of the altar who serves God properly holds himself aloof from women (Cat. xii, 25). St. Jerome further seems to speak of a custom generally observed when he declares that clerics, "even though they may have wives, cease to be husbands".

So St. Jerome, who was writing in about the C4th-5th indicates married priests exist. He also gives a hint of the gruesome nature of this whole affair, if you imagine what it was like for women married to priests who had ceased to be husbands.

This passage reffering to about the C7th gives an idea of the situation in the first millenium which is pretty much the same as that in the orthodox church (and eastern catholic churches) today:

Celibacy in a bishop became a matter of precept. If he were previously married, he had at once to separate from his wife upon his consecration. On the other hand, this council, while forbidding priests, deacons, and subdeacons to take a wife after ordination, asserts in emphatic terms their right and duty to continue in conjugal relations with the wife to whom they had been wedded previously.

So married priests existed (but had to have been married before becoming priests). It does not tell us what happened to the bishops wives after they separated. If they were lucky they might have become nuns. Alternatively their fate may have been worse as we shall see.

So why did celibacy later become totally mandatory? I can suggest two factors:

The first is the inheritance of land by offspring, usually by the first son (primogeniture) but an alternative system prevalent in France, called Parage, had the land divided amongst all the sons. If a priest, who resides in church property has sons they will want to inherit the land. This passage indicates that sons of priests sometimes became priests themselves and took over from their fathers:

a large number of the clergy, not only priests but bishops, openly took wives and begot children to whom they transmitted their benefices.

This situation was bound to cause property disputes between priestly families and the church, and requiring celibacy is a good way for the church to remove this problem.

The other problem, around the turn of the first millenium was impious people becoming priests who had no concern for the interests of the church.

Bishop Odo of Bayeaux, who commissioned the Bayeaux Tapestry (and with four prominent appearances is the most prominent man there, more so than William the Conqueror!) is a good example of a bishop, to whom the episcopacy was just another avenue into the aristocracy. Priests were forbidden to spill blood, so when leading his troops Odo used a mace! He tried to raise an army to make himself pope by force, but this was his fatal move, William (the Conqueror) did not want him taking a substantial number of troops, whom he needed, away to Rome, so odo was imprisoned.

Essentially the church would not survive if it was entirely staffed by the likes of Odo, and part of the efforts to get a grip included requiring celibacy.

There is no single watershed date but a series of church councils made successive efforts to stamp clergy wives and families out of existence. This gives an idea:

The earliest decree in which the children were declared to be slaves, the property of the Church, and never to be enfranchised, seems to have been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were promulgated later on against the wives and concubines (see the Synod of Melfi, 1189, can. xii), who by the very fact of their unlawful connection with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to be seized as slaves by the over-lord.

The process was finally complete by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (not the first as I said previously!), but priests could still get away with keeping mistresses or concubines. And there were still some married priests, presumably because there was enough corruption in parts for them to get away with it, also there were still a few loopholes which were not removed until the Council of Trent in 1545:

Henceforth all conjugal relations on the part of the clergy in sacred orders were reduced in the eyes of canon law to mere concubinage. Neither can it be pretended that this legislation, backed, as it were, by the firm and clear pronouncements of the Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215, and later by those of the Council of Trent, remained any longer a dead letter.
Laxity among the clergy at certain periods and in certain localities must undoubtedly be admitted, but the principles of the canon law remained unshaken, and despite all assertions to the contrary made by unscrupulous assailants of the Roman system the call to a life of self-denying continence has, as a rule, been respected by the clergy of Western Christendom.

I suppose I'm an "unscrupolous assailant of the Roman system"! The above passage does admit though that concubinage did go on, not to mention that seemingly every pope in the centuries surrounding the renaissance had at least one mistress.

Sons of Pope's were reffered to as "Nephews" and interestingly Nepotism derives from the italian for Nephew, as Popes were often trying to find positions for their uhh nephews.

Well I think I'll stop there for now! Questions are welcome! Essentially my opinion is that rather than making priests more pure and holy, mandatory celibacy just made life very hard for the partners and offspring of priests, so was a bad idea from the start.

313. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39700 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 4:18 pm

Veronique, celibacy has been mandatory for catholic priests since I think the first lateran council in the C11th. Around about the same time women disappeared from the diakonate. Married priests remained however right up until the beginning of the C19th despite their being banned.

Eastern rite catholics have always had married priests though. Also since the early 90's if you're a married protestant priest and you convert you can become a catholic priest. Which has irked some celibate catholic priests!

Ok I'm a lapsed catholic as you may have guessed! I think most people expect the married priest thing to change in the distant future. Women in the priesthood is of course completely unthinkable to the vatican!

314. Cataloguing every species on earth

Comment #39693 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 2:42 pm

The Renault Scenic on my drive looks very much like my neighbour's Citroen Picasso. One did not evolve from the other.

The car manufacturing meme, you might say, or the idea of the car has evolved through its many manifestation. Subject of course to the natural selection of market demand.

They both of course share common ancestry with the very first car(s) which in turn was a "mutation" of earlier forms like the horse-drawn carriage.

well inarticulately expressed but you get the idea.

315. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39689 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 2:30 pm

Well if it's a hoax he's gone to the trouble of righting a whole load of books on biblical prophecy, search for him on amazon to see what I mean. also a search reveals christian websites that take him seriously as well . . .

316. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39682 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 2:12 pm

damn it all I'm becoming a postmodernist, truth is an illusion! This Jack van Impe you speak of is just a social construct, there's no reality behind the name I say!

317. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39678 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 2:02 pm

darn it IQHQ, this wikipedia of yours is nothing but a collection of wildly varying writings written by different people at different times, not the unadulterated word of god or something!

318. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39673 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 1:45 pm

I'm not sure, wikipedia is convinced at any rate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Van_Impe

319. Cataloguing every species on earth

Comment #39664 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 1:26 pm

BillySands and Robert Maynard I commend all the effort you expend refuting the creationists on this site!

320. Lou Dobbs w/ Hitchens on Al Sharpton's Bigoted Remark

Comment #39643 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 12:25 pm

Spaghetti Monster I like the empty gaps in your messages. There's something Wittgensteinean about them.

321. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39622 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 10:36 am

Yes, well I understand the left-handed were regarded with suspicion in years past (based on some religious superstition probably). I had a teacher whose (right-handed) hand-writing was somewhat messy. She said this was so because she was really left handed but had been forced to use her right hand when she was a catholic school-girl.

322. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39602 by BaronOchs on May 11, 2007 at 9:18 am

elfinabout good point, yes I agree that according to your definitions paedophilia is not a bad thing, whereas pederasty is probably harmful in all instances.

323. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39295 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 9:21 am

not only brainless cretins, they also seemed devoid of any real personality. Just look at his ridiculous sobbing fit after that schmaltzed up spiritual. They were a pair of grotesques.

Just compare their vacuos faith with the immense depth present in real good art.

324. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39260 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 8:27 am

"a mockery to archeological science" god forbid!

"we can have happy meaningful lives without a deity -well I doubt that because you're always searching always searching always wondering"

WTF??!!

325. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39255 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 8:23 am

These people are bonkers this is a satire isn't it?

It is, you had me there I what?

Why are you looking like that???

Tell me this is a satire!!

*presses gun to head etc*

326. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39252 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 8:20 am

Allright deviljelly I made it a bit further this time.

I had to laugh at that guys blood fetish. also are any of those deathbed quotes accurate?

327. Apocalypse Of The Honeybees

Comment #39219 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 7:36 am

I found the manner of this article really irritating. But important story though.

also deviljelly I only survived a few seconds of that video!

328. Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans

Comment #39153 by BaronOchs on May 10, 2007 at 5:19 am

chadvader123 are you going to give us a bit more to go on?

329. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39056 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 9:51 pm

The cardinal talks about "an unnatural form of prostitution", implying that there is also a "natural form of prostitution".

Augustine and Aquinas both argued that prostitution was a necessary evil, since it provided lustful men who otherwise would commit adultery and corrupt the sacred institution of marriage a means to vent off. Prostitutes therefore, they likened to the sewers of a city.

The hypocrisy and sexism could not be more obvious.

330. Brazil Greets Pope but Questions His Perspective

Comment #39034 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 7:52 pm

MIND_REBEL I'd love to see that debate.

If I were Bill Gates or someone I'd tell the Pope I'd give a f***load of money to charitable causes if he'd only engage in a no holds barred debate with Dawkins or Harris.

he should be overjoyed, he'd be making money for charity and refuting a heretic in one swoop. Someone though I think he might feel otherwise!

331. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #39029 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 7:38 pm

Someone mentioned the Clergy Abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Pedophile abuse has pretty much always gone on in the Catholic Church but the public awareness surrounding the scandal, which peaked at the beginning of this century had been present and growing even since the sixties, which is a long time. Crucial to the fact that they nevertheless kept the lid on for so long is that the problem was never refferred to by the proper term - Pedophilia - ,rather homosexuality was said to be the problem. The church thus managed to pull the wool over people's eyes perhaps not without a little help from the still strong prejudice against gays over those decades.

This has not changed. Take this for example, from the catholic journal "crisis":

"The crisis is mostly, however, about active homosexuals in the priesthood. Anyone (including an archbishop) who does not admit this is simply part of the problem."

"the media prefer not to treat homosexual behavior as the issue. Still, it is the issue, and if the hierarchy does not root it out—if it takes the easy approach of instituting "new procedures" for dealing with abuse only after it has occurred—then the devastation is going to continue."

Thus they manage to tar gays and distort the real responsibility for the problem.

They go on:

Homosexuals have a more serious problem with promiscuity and lack of restraint than do heterosexuals (see, for example, Spence Publishing's Homosexuality in American Public Life, edited by Christopher Wolfe). Forty percent of homosexual sex today is reportedly unprotected—this after two decades of safe-sex instruction.

Silly me for forgetting what a great promoter of sex education and protected sex the catholic church has been. Sorry to go on at such length but I feel this dirty tactic ought to be exposed.

332. A Lonesome Tortoise, and a Search for a Mate

Comment #39005 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 6:01 pm

epeeist yes I've heard "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" is a good book so I think I'll give it a read. I've seen a little of the countryside around Macclesfield, the view from Cloud Summit and the sight of Jodrell Bank in the distance stick particularly in my mind.

333. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #38968 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 4:40 pm

The Roman Catholic leader recommends holding the "provocative demonstration (Pride), in a location that is closed and limited some way

How about the limited closed walls of your F***ING MIND!

I think after all the evils the church has caused these past 2 millenia it's time you learnt a bit of humility cardinal?

334. Sam Harris in conversation with Oliver McTernan

Comment #38905 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 12:56 pm

28. Comment #38855 by devolved on May 9, 2007 at 10:28 am

Did you hear about the atheist who believed he existed without any supernatural means of support? How deluded can you get?

Now devolved that really is a troll comment isn't it? not that I'm the kind to flag it thus myself.

You obviously see it as self-evidently obvious we need a "supernatural means of support" but this is not obvious to a great number of intelligent and sensitive people. So you're going to need some kind of argument, I wait with interest.

335. Sam Harris in conversation with Oliver McTernan

Comment #38903 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 12:40 pm

RE krispar and Will S on the pointlessness of prayer without an interventionist god I would say to be fair prayer can be something other than hectoring a divine being for various favours. In its better forms I'd say it is a kind of meditation. I think Sam Harris agrees, for instance he said he found it plausible someone who sits in a cave praying to Jesus for a year might come out with a profoundly altered conscience. Where of course I'd disagree with McTernan is that I do not consider it offers communication with a divine being(s).

Is he suffering from amnesia? Or was he, for 30 years, a complete hypocrite?

I don't share your sentiment there Will S. Many catholic priests and parishioners think for themselves rather than towing the vatican line and I say good for them. Imagine a world in which they didn't?

336. A Lonesome Tortoise, and a Search for a Mate

Comment #38883 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 11:48 am

I remember an amorous pair of swans arrived at Sale water park (Manchester UK) and were hoped on to breed and give the lake a lasting population of swans. Until they realised they were both male!

I don't know if there are any swans there now.

337. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #38875 by BaronOchs on May 9, 2007 at 11:20 am

Romin_Devourin well done now I have to be relieved you're a theist! (I should have guessed from the nazi overtones, you even said "final solution"!)

Do share with us what/why you believe?

338. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38465 by BaronOchs on May 8, 2007 at 7:40 am

Thanks for the link John P.

339. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38457 by BaronOchs on May 8, 2007 at 7:14 am

So what then...what do you propose to fill the vacuum--i.e. what belief system do you propose in Faith's stead? Nothing....Randomness?

Life itself is my god and religion, and that is all.

340. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38445 by BaronOchs on May 8, 2007 at 5:52 am

On another note, I wonder just how much faith the Pope really has? If I gave him a eucharist he knew was laced with cyanide, would he trust in the transubstantiation to transform the wafer into a harmless "body of christ" before eating it? Or would he decline to eat?

Some churches in the seventies started using raisinbread or honeybread at the eucharist but the vatican said if there's anything other than flour or water in the bread it can't become the body of christ. They do think for these kind of situations!

341. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38435 by BaronOchs on May 8, 2007 at 4:58 am

Well I've emailed Sam Harris asking him to submit a clarification regarding the "some propositions are so dangerous. . . " quote.

I know he's a busy man but if he does respond I'll be well pleased.

342. An ecumenical contempt for religion

Comment #38343 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 5:19 pm

I recall reading somewhere Bush doesn't in fact attend church that regularly. But I don't know if that is true.

This has just raised for me the question was his statement to the effect "God told me to invade iraq" a genuine expression of a dangerous faith or a bizarre PR move?

343. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38339 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 4:41 pm

Death is only scary if you don't know where you're going when you die.

I haven't been through anything like open heart surgery, and I respect your own feelings about this matter. I have to say though I do not feel that way about death at all. If I thought there was an afterlife I would expect no less than for it to possess the same uncertainty and surprise present in this earthly life. I wouldn't want a religion dictating to me endless rules that affect where I might end up.

Someone who seems to have had an undogmatic belief in the afterlife was Walt Whitman, which is expressed in this poem, among others:

"Darest thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?

No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.


I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou -- all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream'd of, in that region - that inaccessible land"

Walt Whitman

'Towards the Unknown Region' 1870.

He evidently didn't know where he was going and was not scared.

However while I'm quite open to the possibility of some kind of conscious existence after death I do not expect there will be any.

As a good materialist I think as soon as the chemical processes that keep me going break down and my constituent atoms begin to disperse that is it. That is not something that frightens me, I only wish to live every day up until the day I die to the full. Also I love the world and the fact that oneday I will be no longer differentiated from it in anyway is one I welcome.

344. Richard Dawkins on Canada AM

Comment #38293 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Me neither

. . .

I want to fit in you know

345. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38276 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 11:27 am

Ok it is a little bit funny now that we're so affronted by a demand for proof!

That said MB seems to be doubting our honesty, which is different from doubting someone's supposed knowledge of supernatural beings.

346. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38244 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 10:06 am

Madeliene Bunting is a cynic. She opens her piece by insinuating atheist authors are just in it for the money (there are easier ways for people of their talent to make money). And ends with her demand for proof of conversions. Did she think we might soup up some fake conversion stories or something?

347. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38213 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 8:37 am

RE: Logicel and briancoughlanworldcitizen.

I think Sam Harris's suggestion was only meant for very special circumstances.

i.e. If I told you there was someone who has a hydrogen bomb and is completely convinced it is god's will he must detonate it, and I had the power to kill this person surely it would be right to go ahead?

Perhaps some slightly less extreme examples can be thought of but I don't think he saying anything much more controversial than that. I will come clean I have read numerous articles and so forth by Sam Harris but haven't yet read The End of Faith. So you can fill me in if I'm misled.

348. The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it

Comment #38193 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 7:42 am

By proof, I wonder what she means? A scanned copy of a receipt for TGD? Three photos of yourself, first with a Bible, then The God Delusion, then nothing, and ..a smile?

Be careful she doesn't drop the envelope and get them in the wrong order.

349. The torture of the grave Islam and the afterlife

Comment #38162 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 6:40 am

I suppose my not clearly explaining what I meant by 'apply' motivated your describing my comment as being a bit 'sinister'?

That is correct. In that case I think we agree. I was actually beginning to have doubts myself over my position. Based as it is on personal experience at the liberal end of religion. I have for instance met not a few evangelical christians and more fanatical catholics who do come across as brainwashed.

I was once at a talk organised by a university christian union where the speaker, who graduated from Oxford in history, stated that there is more evidence for christ's existence than almost any other historical figure!

I imagine it takes a powerful delusion to make a history graduate say that with a straight face.

350. The torture of the grave Islam and the afterlife

Comment #38151 by BaronOchs on May 7, 2007 at 6:03 am

Logicel I will say what comes immediately to mind in answer to your question.

I have read a little about some cults such as the moonies for instance. Any cult member generally does not think about anything other than the doings of their cult, or do any activities not related to their cult. It is a complete mind takeover.

I am a lapsed christian and I recall from church there were the uber-devout members somewhat like the above description. But there are plenty of people for whom church is just one of the things they do and are quite willing to take the teachings of their faith with a pinch of salt if need be. I don't think the average parish priest in britain would quake if some of his parishioners missed mass every now and again to go to a football match (or whatever). In a proper cult you would not get that!

I haven't got statistics but my well formed impression is certainly more than half of children of catholic parents or attendees of catholic schools do not practice the faith as adults. (Admittedly this "crisis of transmission" is bewailed by not a few priests and others).

As I understand in the UK someone with a mental illness can be treated against their will, but I think only if they are seen to be an immediate danger to themselves or others (I will have to check this). I think that is cautious enough. If people want to practice a delusional faith in a free society they should be able to do so without having treatment "applied" to them against their will.

In the same way we have every right to deny faith respect and consistently challenge believers to re-examine their position.