Great. I think we've gotten to the crux of this thing.
freedom of conscience is a more accurate phrase when freedom of religion is held to extend to the non- religious.
I agree with that. It is much clearer that we are talking about the expanded version of freedom of religion rather than the old, narrow, and incorrect version.
My point is, though, that freedom of religion was expanded. It was deemed incorrect to give bennies to only religious people and that they had to be given to similarly situated non-religious people, thus freedom of religion was expanded. That's how it happened. Freedom of conscience did not govern that process. It wasn't like they said, hey, let's add some bits from freedom of conscience to the pot. Rather they said that freedom of religion should apply equally to all people. It was the people who were belatedly included, not the freedoms, although the net effect is the same. Thus freedom of religion offers me and mine everything that I could need in this regard and I don't have to go beyond freedom of religion, as interpreted, to make my claim, thus it's redundant.
As for the nomenclature, well, I suppose we could amend the first amendment to say freedom of conscience in lieu of freedom of religion, but that's a lot of trouble for nothing but changing the name for additional clarity. |
