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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

> The idea of a religious exemption isn't just some pastafarian variation

Anyone’s assumptions or thoughts can qualify as a religion. At least for any consistent and useful definition of religion.

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And in the united states it does. A religion is any deeply held belief. That's the only standard.

But where do you draw the line? What if I have a deeply held religious belief that human sacrifice is required by god? Can I then go around killing people? There’s got to be some kind of limit.

There are plenty of lines around what rights a genuinely held belief entitles you to. What the parent is saying is that there is no line between religious and other deeply-held beliefs.

You draw the line at taxes.

> Members of certain religious groups (including the Amish and Mennonites) may be exempt from paying Social Security taxes. To become exempt, they must:

> Be a member of a religious sect that makes a reasonable provision of food, shelter and medical care for its dependent members and has done so continuously since December 31, 1950;

https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-02411

There is endless jurisprudence on this topic. Basically the government draws the line at where your beliefs affect others and there are different levels of urgency the government must show to trample on religious rights depending on the risk to the counterparty.

This. If my beliefs/“religion” say I can’t be fingerprinted, that’s fine. But if my beliefs say I need to sacrifice newborn babies on an altar, that’s not ok, and I will be charged with murder.

> Basically the government draws the line at where your beliefs affect others

Circumcision shows that this is not even the case.

> A religion is any deeply held belief.

I deeply believe in the existence of gravity. I guess that makes me a Scientitian.

And if a civic action depended on your belief in gravity, which was a belief the government did not share, then this would be relevant.

And they rarely do in countries that award special privileges to “religions”.

It all comes down to whether some court, quite arbitrarily, rules whether one's convictions are a “religion” or not, and if they be, one may derive special privileges from it.

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