I don’t feel like Samuel Alito was picking on atheists, but I do think he’s a complete hack.
At least he will never be a pharmacist. He’d be a terrible pharmacist.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Catholic Hospitals are getting to be a problem in rural areas and small cities. The trend of consolidation is picking up.
Why should hospitals not be held to the same standards for reproductive services as pharmacies for reproductive drugs? Seems a glaring inconsistency.
Getting to be? Three decades ago that was an apt description. The consolidation and growth of Catholic hospitals is the business response to an institution that had an excellent reputation. That reputation was in part based on the fact that Catholic hospitals could deliver more for less because of its large and dedicated almost free labor force. That pool of labor has been shrinking for decades; so, that more for less is now long gone. (But in general, they still rank with the better providers.)
The same can be said for Parochial schools.
Another excuse for neoliberal public/private solutions? Privatizing emergency services?
ACLU ALSO FILES BRIEF IN SECOND CASE AGAINST A LARGE CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE SYSTEM FOR DENYING EMERGENCY CARE TO PREGNANT WOMEN
https://www.aclu.org/news/doctors-rally-behind-tamesha-means-appeal-woman-denied-emergency-medical-c
are-because-hospitals
Bad link — use this one
This is related to the SC abortion decisions this week and the pharmacist “conscience” appeal that was not accepted.
With such a large market share (and lots of government money flowing to Catholic hospitals), it’s no longer acceptable for them to force their religious practices on people and in violation of federal law.
Alito continues the head-spinning argument that “Freedom of religion” is really Freedom To Impose Your Religion On Others. What’s next? He would uphold a Muslim pharmacist who would not fill prescriptions from women who didn’t have their faces covered?
Church is church and Business is business. To combine them is to set the First Amendment on its head.
In a related matter, Hobby lobby is gone in our town and replaced by Michael’s Crafts who runs sales on Sunday instead of being closed. It’s nice going to a store that doesn’t ram the owners’ religion down your throat.
I suspect Alito is one of those people who would claim that Islam is not a “real religion”.
Any atheist can confirm that probably the most common question we get is, “But how can you have any morals if you don’t believe in God?” So I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone like Alito hold that view.
It is one of life’s most sadly ironic things that the lions share of atheists I know have higher moral standards and greater levels of empathy and compassion than many who proclaim to be ardent followers of a purportedly benevolent God. I can only assume from his comments that I can include Alito among that contingent of religious believers.
“But how can you claim to have morals when really you just act morally because you’re just terrified of being sent to hell to be tortured for eternity”?
Typically shuts them up.
Since the religious beliefs most people hold are nothing more than a byproduct of where they were raised, not much critical thought goes into them at all. Coaxing out of people the reasons for their beliefs always makes for interesting conversation.
I’ve always asked questions, and when they couldn’t supply answers because they honestly don’t even know what their religion stands for or says, provide them with biblical citations. Bonus points (IMHO) when they might cite Paul, persecutor of Christians, while I’d cite gospels and ask why they didn’t put more stock into what Jesus actually said, instead of Paul.
Yeah, devil and quoting scripture and all that, but it is always interesting to have a conversation about someone’s faith that brings out the fact that they don’t even know what they believe and why. At that point, my job is done. I’m not going to tell someone what they should or shouldn’t believe in, but I take pleasure in helping someone use their critical thinking skills to figure it out.
“The implication of Alito’s opinion is that the only basis for a moral or ethical viewpoint is religious faith. But that is an offensive suggestion that redefines the words ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ in an idiosyncratic way.”
The way I respond to people who express the idea that ethics and morality are indivisible from religion is thus: Any functioning society has got to have standards/rules regulating relationships between people, and is bound to come up with rules such as don’t kill, don’t steal, and so on. Fear of God is some sort of overprint.
In terms of the whole notion of religious exemptions: I find this idea corrosive of our constitutional order. I know that in American society we tend to be willing to carve out such exemptions, but that’s not the case everywhere; the example that comes to mind is France.
I think the people who wanted this, including Alito, really thought they were going to carve out a COMPLETE exemption, on every law they did not like. Including taxes.
It’s really not much different than the sovereign citizen movement. They don’t want the laws to apply to themselves,
That was the dream. Alito is now frustrated that the dream might very well be dead.
Alito and Thomas will quit when these votes start going against them.
But now he sees he might not even get the chance to hear the cases he wants to hear.
.
Alito is a Scalia wannabe without the horses.
I was never too impressed with Scalia’s “brilliant legal mind”. It seemed to me he just kept looking for an answer that would fit his preconceived notions of what the question wanted. Rather like any grifting preacher except that he used the Constitution rather than the bible. When even he could no longer find the answers he wanted, he turned to originalism.
There were 55 attendees and 34 people signed the results of the constitutional convention. Since nearly all were inveterate letter writers and most were contentious it is easy to find examples of support for practically any position, no matter how extreme … and he did.
I find the seemingly overwhelming need in this country for our elected officials to constantly denigrate and seek to minimize the secular foundations of our Republic to be maddening. Our founding fathers would recognize the right wing religious crowd for what it is; a band of ideological zealots whose philosophy is a danger to many of the basic principles on which the nation was founded.