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Comment by actually_a_dog | Hacker News Reader

I know a few anti-vaxxers, and they’re more concerned about vitamins and colon cleanses than doctrines of mainstream religions.

The wording is 'sincerely held religious belief' and that's a key phrase in the legislation, as I understand it.

At least for federal employees, some of the questions they ask when judging the sincerity of your belief is what other medical procedures you've opted out of because of your religious belief, and what specific part of your religion forbids you from receiving the vaccine. It definitely wasn't a rubber stamp exemption approval like I thought it would be.

It should be a rubber stamp. (There should be no religious exemption in the first place). I grew up thinking America’s ideal was to be a country with separation of church and state.

I do not see why a religion I make up 10 minutes ago should be any less of a religion than one made 100 years ago.

If you can prove that you sincerely believe in the religion you made up 10 minutes ago, then you'd get the same exemption. It's not like they gave a list of religions that qualify for exemptions.

So now the government is in the business of measuring sincerity in beliefs?

Are Catholics sincere if they have sex before marriage? Use birth control? Get a divorce?

Are Jews sincere if they eat non kosher food? Muslims if they eat non Halal and drink alcohol and gamble?

Christians who use Christ to persecute others? Such as gay people who want to get married?

You could just read what the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-12-religious-disc...

The sincerity of the belief is a measured by the credibility of the claimant in each specific case. They are assumed to be credible by default unless the other party can show glaring inconsistencies. Even then, the guidance notes that people's beliefs change so challenging such a claim is relatively hard.

A sincerely held religious belief is basically a "get out of jail free" card (figuratively) because of the issues you point out. With the preponderance of evidence standard, all one has to do is convince the judge that their belief is more likely to be sincere than not. If one can prove that they go to church on a semi-regular basis, for example, it's nearly impossible to convince a judge that the belief is insincere.

The thing that's causing issues is that many people who are objecting to the Covid vaccines are largely not anti-vax in general, and their reasons aren't really rooted in the philosophy of religious law around vaccines, but the aggressive and sudden push for these particular ones is tripping all of their mental alarms, because aggressive and sudden intrusions by untrustworthy governments are often used to accomplish evil that is extremely contrary to their religious beliefs. A court probably isn't going to be sympathetic to that argument, but I think it's what's happening.

>Even then, the guidance notes that people's beliefs change so challenging such a claim is relatively hard.

It is not relatively hard, it is (or should be) impossible.

My religion stating that I believe in whatever I want to believe and is subject to change at any time is as valid as any other religion, from the perspective of the government. Assuming we are striving for separation of church and state.

Religion never needs to come up in legislation, just like one's favorite tv shows or music.

There's no ethical way to prove sincerity of belief. By ordeal or by torture are all that I can think of, and they both have serious problems.

Religion is socially acceptable mythology. Your 10 minute one has less social acceptance, even if it is equally a myth to some significantly older one. It is the social acceptance that gives it validity. You can guess the social acceptance of worshiping Zeus.

That's why I included the word "bogus."

One wishes they had written something like "belief conforming to established practice" or something, that would defend against antivaccionationists making up stuff on the spot.

Yeah, I agree. A couple people already don't like that I've asked the question, but they won't speak up about it.

You don't need to part of major religion to gain exemption. Some people simply stated that their body is their temple. I don't think you even need religious thinking at all. If you held strong sincere moral and ethical position, like the need to preserve your right to bodily autonomy.

Moral and ethical positions aren't relevant. Only religious and medical exemptions are allowed.

Protestantism isn't a religion, it's thousands of different ones, one for each church or individual who believes they're getting direct revelation or that they've found a new way to read the Bible by taking out every prime-numbered verse or something.

Government should get out of the business of defining religion, and tax them like everyone else unless they can prove they operate in some sort of secularly charitable way (like everyone else.) And if government gets out of the business of defining religion, it should get out of the business of religious exemptions. Make it required or make it optional for people regardless of belief. It's perverse to make me prove that my belief is purely, religiously irrational in order to get an exemption.

Imagine a judge saying: "Sorry, that reason you've given for not allowing your child to have a blood transfusion makes a lot of sense, so it's not a religious belief. Therefore I order that the child be given the blood transfusion."

They're not claiming a general exemption from vaccination.

All of them

Do you have a source for this claim?

The comment is based on their own religious beliefs.

It doesn't matter.

If politians are trying to force people to take a jab they don't beleive they need - people will use an escape shute instead of the door.

No, it really does matter. I don't have a problem with people who have genuine religious objections. I do have a problem with people who are just making shit up to get out of taking a shot.

Well, I guess it's your problem to keep.

This ignores the fact that there are other religious reasons to oppose it, such as the fact that fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses were used to test the vaccine.

This is a lie.

None of the covid vaccines contain aborted fetuses. Even when vaccines have used fetal cells lines, the cells were harvested from from 50 years ago.

Pfizer https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-529913215948

Johnson & Johnson https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-johnson-aborted-id...

Moderna’s RNA did not use this http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/docs/vacc...

Even the Pope, head of the one of the most staunchest antiabortion religions, has gone on record saying that it is the duty of all Catholics to get vaccinated if possible, as all individuals have a collective duty each other.

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...

The sad fact is, it has become a political game to refuse a covid vaccine, as opposed to all vaccines. There is no difference between these vaccines and the countless others all of us have received — and were required to receive — in our lives.

I never said they contained them. I literally said "used to test the vaccine."

Religions that oppose abortion typically don't have a statute of limitations on when the cells from them are okay to use to grow cell lines to use in testing.

> Religions that oppose abortion typically don't have a statute of limitations on when the cells from them are okay to use to grow cell lines to use in testing.

You literally just made this up. I cited the pope himself.

Using abortion as a complaint about vaccines is disingenuous, and it deserves to be treated as such. If this was the case, we wouldn’t be hearing about this in 2021, it would have been well known for 40 years.

The sad truth is, evangelicals didn’t care about abortion until they lost segregation as a political rallying point. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734303135/throughline-traces-...

I repeat. The whole complaint is a lie.

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