Religious Relevance in Hiring

The fourth item on Sean Faircloth's list of policy objectives for his new atheist political strategy is, No religious discrimination in land use or employment.

In this posting, I am going to focus on the employment issue.

This policy means that a person's religious beliefs are not to be considered relevant when hiring a person for a job unless it is actually a part of the job qualifications.

An example where religion is relevant is reflected in the fact that a Catholic Church should not be required to hire a Jew as a priest, nor would the synagogue be forced to hire the Christian. There are certain positions in certain organizations that require that the person hold a particular faith.

There are also situations like those I described yesterday where religious beliefs (or non-religious secular philosophies) prevent a person from performing the duties associated with a job. Where this happens, religious beliefs are relevant and may be considered. Though, technically, religious belief is not the relevant issue here, but willingness to perform the duties of the job one is applying for. A paramedic who refuses to give blood transfusions at an accident site is disqualified, not because of his religion, but his refusal to give transfusions at an accident site. The reason does not matter. It is the refusal that matters.

However, in cases where religious beliefs are not required to do the job and the job has no duties that the employee would refuse to carry out for religious reasons, then religion is not relevant to doing the job and shall not be relevant.

At this point, I would like to remind the reader that there are limits to religious tolerance. It is simply not the case that we can disregard all religious beliefs and tolerate all religious practices. A religion that practices the sacrifice of young virgins, or that demands the death of anybody of a different religion, or that claims that the wife must die with her husband, or that we must not suffer a witch to live, are just some possible examples of religious practices that nobody has a right to exercise nor do others have an obligation to tolerate.

Similarly, we must also find certain a-theistic philosophies intolerable. An example of this would be the view that we must exterminate the religion meme by euthanizing all who appear to be infected with it. Verbal persuasion is the only legitimate way to alter a person's views on such matters.

However, among peaceful religions (an a-theistic philosophies), where religion is not an integral part of the job, there is no need to consider those beliefs when making employment decisions. In the case of hiring the church leader, religious convictions are relevant. In terms of hiring a teacher in a school that provides state-funded education to children, it does not - as long as one is willing to teach the received academic theories regarding such things as the age of the earth, biological evolution, archaeology, and history.

In light of this, consider a case in which a church that decides to build a school. There are two main routes that the church may take.

One route us that it could be a church school designed to teach the beliefs of the church - a school for training would-be priests, for example. Here, religious belief would be relevant to employment and may be considered.

Or it could be a school whose purpose is to teach general knowledge to the public at large. Religious belief is not relevant to the job of providing children with a general education in history, math, science, geography, archaeology, and the like. Therefore, religious beliefs may not be used as an employment criterion. Doing so would be discriminatory and prejudicial - and these do not serve a legitimate interest.

The issue becomes more pronounced when state money is involved. The state has no business taxing all of its citizens to create employment or career opportunities only for those who meet certain religious qualifications. The state has no business taxing everybody yet creating jobs only for Christians, or only for those who believe in a god. State money may only be legitimately spent in ways that treat all citizens equally before the law - meaning that it does not consider qualifications other than those relevant to the job in question.

Going back to our hypothetical school, the church must rely on its own resources to fund a school that teaches its beliefs and doctrines - such as training priests or teaching its own version of history or biology. If it takes state money, then its teachings shall be those of received academic opinions, not those of their specific religion. Teaching received academic opinion requires no religious test, and none should be used.

If a church wishes to handle adoptions it may do so in its own way regarding children voluntarily given to their care by private individuals responsible for that care. An unwed mother who gives her child to such an agency would meet this criterion. However, if the agency takes state money, then they must use the state standards regarding who is qualified to adopt. It may lobby the state as to what those standards should be. However, when they act as agents of the state (taking state money), then they are to use the state standards.

If a church adopts the practice of accepting food donations and offering food to the poor, they may do so in the context of trying to convert the poor to their religion and use understanding of church doctrine as a qualification for employment in the kitchen. However, if it takes state money, its mission is to feed the hungry, not to convert people. This is a job for which religious beliefs are irrelevant and may not be considered a criterion of employment.

A part of the principle of freedom of religion is that religions stand or fall on their own. The fact that the church of Athena seems to have hit some hard times recently does not justify a state bailout providing the church with subsidies in order to rebuild that religion.

If the school or orphanage or soup kitchen cannot stay open without state aid, then so be it. The church has the option to end that service. If a church service is not viable without state funds, the state should not keep it running with government subsidies. Instead, the state should buy its services from a competing agency that is willing to sell the services that serve actual and legitimate state interests.

It is scarcely recognized that the Catholic Church is passing much of the cost of lawsuits against it for child sexual abuse of priests by passing those costs on to the taxpayers. It diverts money that would have otherwise gone to its schools, orphanages, and food banks - then demands that the state fund those operations instead. This is functionally no different than giving the taxpayer the bill for these lawsuits.

The principle behind this policy is that of equal standing before the law. Where the state is in a position to provide advantages and disadvantages - to grant or to deny opportunities - it must demonstrate a legitimate state reason in determining who gets those advantages or disadvantages. There is a legitimate state reason to discriminate between competent versus incompetent engineers when paying for the construction of a bridge. There is no legitimate state reason to discriminate between white versus black engineers, or female versus male engineers.

Nor is there a legitimate state interest served in distinguishing between theist versus atheist engineers - unless a person's religion is one that teaches that pi = 3, in which case the question of religious belief overlaps the question of engineering competence. In this case, the state may discriminate. However, this is still an example of discriminating in terms of competent engineering, not a case of discrimination against a religion per se.

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Religious Beliefs and Professional Duties

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In my discussion of Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy, I am at the third of ten policy objectives - that pharmacists and doctors do their job and not use their religion as an excuse to do refuse legal medical help to others.

Faircloth has in mind the case of a rape victim. After enduring the rape, and reporting it to the police, and going through a rape exam, she gets a prescription for a "morning after pill." She goes to a local pharmacist - and he refuses to fill the prescription. Where this happens once, it can happen two or three times. In a more rural part of the country, once is enough.

Faircloth's policy objective is for the law to declare that these jobs come with certain duties and responsibilities, which includes filling legal prescriptions that customers may come in with.

If your religion prohibits you from doing the job, find a different job.

Imagine taking your child to the hospital with a severe bleeding wound and being told, "We do not do blood transfusions here. If you want a blood transfusion, you will have to go elsewhere." And the next nearest hospital is 60 miles away.

However, I do not think that this issue is quite as simple as some wish it to be.

Let's consider conscientious objector status. Here is a case of people who, for religious reasons, refuse to kill. Are we going to advocate putting a gun in their hand and forcing them to kill people? Or are we going to allow them to use their religion as a legitimate reason not to kill?

My next step will be to ask whether or not the pharmacist can use religion as a reason not to kill.

I hold that an fetus has to have a brain capable of having desires before it can have moral standing. You cannot violate the interests of a being that has no interests. And while the being has potential future interests, that only speaks to the possibility of potential future harm if and when those potential interests become actual interests. Therefore, I deny that abortion or the use of a morning-after pill violates any moral prescription. However, the question here is whether and to what degree I may impose those beliefs upon others.

The argument for freedom is substantially an argument against arrogance. It is an argument that says that we are going to allow each competent adult the opportunity to look around and decide his own place in the world. Each of us thinks we are right. However, we are going to require enough humility to require that we use words to convince others of the error of their ways - not guns. We will presume in favor of freedom and the power of non-violent forms of persuasion, and give up freedom only when the arguments for doing so are compelling.

When religion commands somebody to kill others, the argument for finding this freedom intolerable is compelling. When it tells somebody not to kill - as in the case of the conscientious objector - the weight of the argument remains with the presumption of freedom.

However, in the case of the conscientious objector, freedom means that we are not going to compel them to kill. We still leave it to them not to choose the profession of soldier, where killing is potentially required.

We say, Fine. If you do not wish to kill - which is one of the potential duties of a soldier - then do not enlist. Do not go through basic training, get assigned to a squad, get into a battle, and decide at that point not to pull the trigger because you have religious objections to killing. Make your decision before you sign up that this career opportunity is not for you. In addition, do not demand that you be able keep your job as the heavy weapons specialist after you have decided not to do perform the duties that this job requires - because removing you from that position violates your "freedom of religion". Your freedom of religion is exercised in the freedom to not be a soldier.

We can take the same position with respect to the pharmacist. If you object to handing out any legally prescribed drugs, stay out of the pharmacy business. Do not go into training, get yourself a job, take the Sunday shift, and then refuse to do your duty when a customer comes in with a valid prescription for a morning after pill. Make your decision before you start training. This career opportunity is not for you. Do not say that requiring you to sell a legal prescription drug violates your freedom of religion. Your freedom of religion is exercised in the freedom to not be a pharmacist.

Individuals are still given freedom of conscience. We are not going to force people into jobs that are not compatible with their religious beliefs.

We are not going to force the conscientious objector to become a soldier.

We are not going to force that devout Jew or Muslim to become a sausage taster.

We are not going to force the devout animal-rights advocate to become a rancher.

We are not going to require religious fundamentalists to become pharmacists.

We will trust them to take jobs that are compatible with their religious beliefs.

Religious Reasons and Military Justifications

If you are in the US military today, one of your jobs is to help restore Israel to its borders as described in the Bible - in order to bring about (or because success will be evidence that the time is near for) the second coming of Christ.

This is not to say that this is an explicit part of our national foreign policy - which the military is charged with helping to enforce. It would be more accurate to say that this is in the back of the national mind in designing that policy. Those policies that have been made explicit have all been examined under the light of its effects on making it more likely or less likely that Israel will return to its original borders. This concern gets weighed against other matters - such as peace and justice - and can sometimes outweigh those other "secular" concerns.

A part of the reason why Israel can get away with some of the things it gets away with is because of the political influence of this religious faction that holds peace and justice to sometimes subordinate to religious prophesy.

However, let's not deny that this policy of "killing and injustice in the name of a god" is one-sided. On the other side, we also have a "killing and injustice in the name of a god" on the other side.

Unfortunately, when you have two groups of people, each of whom think their god grants them permission to do violence to the other, there is no hope for peace or justice.

This is why wise and civilized societies adopt the principle that religion is a poor reason to do violence. Either they re-interpret their religion as one that condemns such violence, or they abandon that religion. If they do not choose one of these two options, they are condemned to live in a society of violence, poverty, disease, with its resulting death and suffering.

Another way to state this, in a way that is relevant to this series of posts, is that religions reasons shall not color our military decisions at home or abroad. We will not condone, let alone commit, violence and injustice in the name of any god. Each person has a liberty to engage in their own religious practices, up to the point where that practice makes them advocates of violence against others.

I have been spending my time recently looking at Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists. Specifically, I have just started looking at his first policy objective:

Our military shall serve and include all Americans, religious and non-religious, with no hint of bias and with no hint of fundamentalist extremism coloring our military decisions at home or abroad.

I am proposing a slight modification - a stricter rule than Faircloth provides. It calls for "no hint of religious rationalization coloring our military decisions at home or abroad". This principle translates into a prohibition that says that our soldiers do not kill in the name of any god."

Last week I wrote about the first part if this policy objective. I argued that it is absurd to "include all Americans" and that some standards are needed to determine who is acceptable and who is unacceptable. In place of Faircloth's policy above, I suggested that all people are to be accepted for inclusion unless good reason can be provided to the contrary. Religion does not provide a good reason to the contrary. They do not justify blacklisting any person or group. In the absence of religious reasons, there is no justification for blacklisting atheists or gays - which is why they should be included.

In this post, I am looking at the second half of this policy. I am claiming that, in the same way that religion provides a poor reason for blacklisting any person or group, it provides a poor foundation for military decisions. The separation of church and state finds its greatest value in the call for the separation of religion and violence it implies. Killing in the name of a god is prohibited.

Imagine two groups, squabbling over some piece of land because "God gave it to us. It is ours by right."

God did not give that land to anybody. What has happened is that some tribe liked the idea of taking some plot of land from some other tribe. In order to neutralize any guilt they may feel over the fact they are about to become murderers and thieves they assure themselves that their god said it was okay. They will likely pray and perform some religious rituals, after which they will come to the surprising (not!) conclusion, "God says we can have that land." Then the stealing and murdering can commence without all that guilt and shame getting in the way.

You have heard it said that religion is the source of morality. Yet, it is all too common to find people rationalize immorality by saying, "God gave us permission. In fact, He insisted!" The very fact that god is an invention makes this easy.

It is no different than a young child asking imaginary parents if he can stay up late or have cookies for supper. Imaginary authority figures are as strict or as lenient as those who do the imagining want them to be. Usually, these imaginary authority figures are very lenient towards the one doing the asking, but gives the asker all sorts of rules and commandments to impose on others. Typically, the person talking to god will discover that god wants others to obey him (without question and without reason - as a matter of faith) - again, not surprisingly.

There is no defense against this "god said I could" argument. Anybody can assign to their god any attitudes they want their god to have. Nobody can prove that god did or did not say what the speaker said. There is no evidence available to determine the attitudes and actions of an imaginary being.

Try to demonstrate that I have not talked to god and learned that god has granted me and my followers all of the islands of the Hawaii chain, and granted us permission to use all means necessary to acquire that which is our god given us. You have no proof against it. The only tool you have are the instruments of violence - the military and courts - to use against me and my followers.

Do you want peace? Then you agree to the principle that religious reasons are not to be taken as justification for violence and injustice. Religious reasons will not color our military decisions at home or abroad. Those who do not accept this principle - are those who favor killing and injustice in the name of some god. Those prone to kill, maim, and inflict harms in the name of some god are a threat to the public.

In the West, religious nations are more sexist

"First of all, let's look at the correlation with a straightforward measure of whether women can be leaders, which was assessed by asking the level of agreement with two questions: “On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do” and “On the whole, men make better business executives than women do.”

Overall, there's a fairly good correlation. But there is an exception, and that's Asian countries.  There are only a few Asian countries in the sample, so it's hard to draw sweeping conclusions. But they are all very sexist, whether their citizens are religious (Thailand, Taiwan) or non-religious (China, Hong Kong, Japan)

So I took these countries out of the analysis - in fact, what's shown in the graphic is only those countries with a predominantly Western, Christian culture (i.e. North and South America, Europe, and Australia).

In these Westernised countries there's a strong, linear relationship between religion and sexism.

In fact, if you narrow the sample a bit more to look only at European countries the fit is even cleaner (I haven't shown this, but it's a remarkably straight line)."


Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees, November 11, 2011

 

Religion vs. sexism

Conservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates

"Some religions insist on the sexual abstinence before marriage. Isn’t it ironic that the journal Reproductive Health reports a correlation showing that the more religious the state, the higher the rates of teenage pregnancy?


Salon.com, Bernard Starr, Jan 8, 2012

Here's from the report by Reproductive Health:

"Conclusions    
With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly predict  U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of  confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this  relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use  contraception. "


Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States, Joseph M. Strayhorn and Jillian C. Strayhorn

See full report here.

 

Teen birth rate by religiosity

Religious people are less likely to take their medicine

"Sarah Finocchario-Kessler, at the University of Kansas, used data from one such drug trial to see what the effect of religious beliefs (and other psychological factors) was on medication taking.

She found that people who put themselves in God's hands really were less likely to take their medicine.

To be precise, people who used a passive religious deferral coping style (e.g. "I don’t try much of anything; simply expect God to take control") were less likely to take their medicine as often as they were supposed to.  On the other hand,  collaborative religious coping "I work together with God as partners" or self-directing religious coping (e.g., "I make decisions about what to do without God’s help" had no effect on whether people took their medicines.

The biggest effect was with those people who scored high on the "God as locus of health control" measure - that means people who agreed with statements like "Whether or not my HIV disease improves is up to God." "

Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees,  March 02, 2011

Religious Young Adults Become Obese By Middle Age

"Young adults who frequently attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age as young adults with no religious involvement, according to new Northwestern Medicine research. This is the first longitudinal study to examine the development of obesity in people with various degrees of religious involvement.

[...]

Previous Northwestern Medicine research established a correlation between religious involvement and obesity in middle-age and older adults at a single point in time. By tracking participants’ weight gain over time, the new study makes it clear that normal weight younger adults with high religious involvement became obese, rather than obese adults becoming more religious.

[...]

The study, which tracked 2,433 men and women for 18 years, found normal weight young adults ages 20 to 32 years with a high frequency of religious participation were 50 percent more likely to be obese by middle age after adjusting for differences in age, race, sex, education, income and baseline body mass index. High frequency of religious participation was defined as attending a religious function at least once a week."

Northwestern.edu, March 23, 2011

Britain is becoming less religious, survey shows

 An interesting survey by NatCen shows that religion is indeed in decline in Britain. Download the PDF on religion here.

"The first point to note is that there is no evidence of a lifecycle effect – that is, as people grow older they become more or less religious. Non-affiliation remains relatively stable as each generation ages; for example, 30 per cent of those born between 1936–1945 did not follow a religion in 1983 (when they were aged 38–47 years), compared with 31 per cent in 2010 (when they were 65–74 years). 

[...]  

Conclusions 
Britain is becoming less religious, with the numbers who affiliate with a religion or attend religious services experiencing a long-term decline. And this trend seems set to continue; not only as older, more religious generations are replaced by younger, less religious ones, but also as the younger generations increasingly opt not to bring up their children in a religion – a factor shown to strongly link with religious affiliation and attendance later in life. 
What does this decline mean for society and social policy more generally? On the one hand, we can expect to see a continued increase in liberal attitudes towards a range of issues such as abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, as the influence of considerations grounded in religion declines. Moreover, we may see an increased reluctance, particularly among the younger age groups, for matters of faith to enter the social and public spheres at all. The recently expressed sentiment of the current coalition government to “do” and “get” God (Warsi, 2011) therefore may not sit well with, and could alienate, certain sections of the population. "


British Social Attitudes 28, 2011-2012

Now for the charts:

 

50 per cent has no religion in Britain

 

No religious affiliation, cohort analysis, 1983–2010

 

Current religious affiliation, by religious upbringing. Notice how despite having had religious upbringing a huge chunk ends up being non-religious.

Doing good is not the preserve of the religious

"This point was demonstrated yet again last week by the latest figures from the government's citizenship survey. In terms of civic engagement and formal volunteering, the figures show no significant difference between those with a religion and those with no religion (57% and 56% respectively). There is scarcely any difference in participation between those with no religion and self-described Christians (56% and 58%). At 44%, the proportion of Hindus and Muslims participating in civic engagement and formal volunteering is actually lower than the proportion of non-religious people doing so, and the lowest of all groups. This is no flash in the pan – it is a continuing feature of the figures over a number of years. 

The figures supplement other data that makes the same point, not only from previous years' citizenship surveys. In 2007, Faith and Voluntary Action, from the National Council of Voluntary Organisations found that "religious affiliation makes little difference in terms of volunteering", and as a matter of simple numbers, the overwhelming majority of the voluntary, community and charity sector in the UK are secular." 

Guardian.co.uk, Andrew Copson, 26 September 2011

Just as I've been thinking but it's really nice to have the statistics now.

Youths are less religious

"In a survey released last year, it was found that 72 percent of millennials were "more spiritual than religious." According to Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, the group that conducted the study. Rainer explained to USA Today that young adults today do not pray, worship, or read the Bible.

In studying the data of 1,200 18-29 year olds, Rainer found that among the 65 percent who described themselves as Christians, "many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only; most are just indifferent," said Rainer. "The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith," he added.

The study found that 65 percent rarely or never pray with others, and 38 percent almost never pray by themselves. In addition, 65 percent rarely or never attend worship services, while 67 percent don not read the Bible or sacred texts."


The Christian Post, Sep. 22 2011

I really can't stand the word "spiritual" but I guess in this case it's better than being religious.