Legal Status of Atheism
| The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. |
In the United States, atheism is protected under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. In August 2005, in a case where a prison inmate was blocked by prison officials from creating an inmate group to study and discuss atheism, the court ruled this violated the inmate's rights under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed previous Supreme Court precedent by ruling atheism be afforded equal protection with religions under the 1st amendment.
There are also online churches that have been created by atheists to secure legal rights, to ordain atheist clergy to hold ceremonies, as well as for parody, education, and advocacy.
Read more about this topic: Atheism And Religion
Famous quotes containing the words legal status of, legal status, legal, status and/or atheism:
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“In the course of the actual attainment of selfish ends—an attainment conditioned in this way by universality—there is formed a system of complete interdependence, wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one man is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this system, individual happiness, etc. depend, and only in this connected system are they actualized and secured.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)