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Of course many unbelievers will scoff at any religious belief, but for those able to consider that there may be a spiritual aspect to existence, then there is a valid question regarding why one belief should be acceptable and valid in society whist another is mocked. In the interests of consistency and fairness, is a belief that there is survival after bodily death is acceptable, why would a belief that some individuals have a limited ability to communicate with those who have died, be open to ridicule and dismissed?

Good on Alan I say, his experience seems to be the start of righting a blatant wrong.

As for how far one goes top accepting beliefs not held by yourself, well probably as far as possible. As a starting point, I'd suggest that if the belief is coherent and not demonstrably incorrect; and if it doesn't interfere with other justifiable laws, (and in the case of job positions, isn't going to adversely interfere with their ability to do the job) then it isn't anyone else's prerogative to discriminate based on that difference of opinion.

I'm a little wary of the ""settled and consistent" belief" reference though. So suppose you thought you were settled in a belief in Protestantism, and suddenly you switched to Buddhism, doesn't that suggest both were unsettled after all, and both should be dismissed?

Actually

It sounds perfectly reasonable that these laws will defend people from minority religions - employment etc. However these laws shouldn't be used to defend the religious teaching itself.

What's the difference

I can't see that there is any difference between someone indulging in BDSM or finding partners of the same sex more attractive than those of the opposite one. So long as it is consentual who else's business is it anyway. I'm sure we all have predilections that some other people might find distasteful or at least odd.

Keep private lives private.

@Michael 36

I hope you're joking. We don't want to discriminate against people who don't believe in God, do we?

I'm not sure that Hinduism (which I presume is one of the "three major religions") is correctly characterised as a belief in "a creator God who revealed themself to mankind", and I would guess that Buddhism (presumably not one of the "three major religions", but nevertheless a major religion) doesn't fit that description, either.

I would have thought that the difference between a "religion" and a "philosophy" in the everyday use of those words has something to do with membership of a community: members of a religion are members of a sort of club. However, a different definition might be appropriate for the law, or perhaps the law should just be binned.

Heavenly Work Ethic

Watch out for the Super Duper Master Organisations which require you to be Porn Proficient for those Special XSSXXXXual EMissions ..... Foreign Deep Cover Trips into Virtual Vital Alien Territory. :-)

Doomed

This kind of stuff is doomed.

The relationship between religion and society can itself be a matter of religious belief. What happens when the law on religious discrimination itself conflicts with someone's religious beliefs?

Many years ago, a Muslim told me of how (in his view at least) it was unreasonable to expect Islam to fit into western secularism, since Islam itself rejected secularism. The idea of God fitting into a human system in which all religions are treated equally was itself offensive. How are religious discrimination laws supposed to deal with cases like that?

The idea that all religions, philosophical belief systems, etc, can be all nicely accommodated by one, single, secular system in which we "all just get along" is simply ignorant nonsense. And that's my firmly held philosophical belief - so there!

And then there's the problem of how to separate philosophy from politics. While some might believe that the two are separate classes of ideas and beliefs, there are also those who fundamentally disagree. And, of course, what counts as political is itself a philosophical question in the first place.

What, for example, is to be made of anarchism as a philosophy? Might philosophical anarchism be an example of how it's not possible to exclude political beliefs from protection at the same time as protecting philosophical freedom? How can the law be enforced in the case of philosophical anarchists without violating their philosophical rights?

Re: 3 major religions

A cult? Those who don't follow any of them regard all three as branches of Judaism and are happy to treat the rise of the latter two as "yet another schism". So that's a pretty big cult.

There are also ancient branches of Christianity that have now dwindled to very small numbers of adherents, but the bigger churches give them space in Jerusalem in a way that they'd never dream of doing to certain much larger "happy clappy" congregations.

I don't see that you can judge a religion on either its level of support or its logical basis. It seems that the UK legal system (which now has to, because of this law) is coming to the same conclusion. This being the home of the famously docile CofE, I expect we'll end up with a ruling that religious adherents are people who sit quietly at the back and members of a cult are those who insist on thrusting their beliefs in other people's faces. (At that point, political parties start to look like cults, so parliament may intervene with a new law.)

@Paul Hates Handles

Mediumship is only a part of spiritualism. It's a basically Christian, God worshipping religion, much akin to Catholicism and Protestantism, but the mediumship comes in as a 'demonstration of the continuing endurance of spirit'. In fact the part of the service which involves mediums is called the demonstration. I'm not saying I believe in it, and I'm not a spiritualist, but I'm saying it's no more hokey than saying that miracles are a demonstration of the existence of God. There's also a heavy emphasis on spiritual healing, including prayer healing, like in the Baptist flavour of Christianity.

Spiritualism is a recognised religion, and as such there should be no question in this case - clear and simple discrimination on grounds of religious belief. Should be wrapped up inside of an hour and shouldn't have even made it to court!

Who is in and who is out? It's as bad as OS's...

@ Michael 36. Yes, I would suggest you have some confusions regarding religion and what it is if you based it's definition only upon a few book based Abrahamic faiths.

@ Michael Proffitt. You may not be aware that there is now a "Pagan Oath" which is an agreed honourable statement that could be utilised by folk even if they are not Pagans. http://www.pebble.uk.net/justice.html

As a professional engineer, a parish councillor and a trustee of a pagan organisation I feel able to be open in all my dealings. All religions or none, I don't mind, but let's not pick and choose.

The only problem I see is

when actively proselytizing groups\cults\religions etc use this ruling as a smoke screen to do exactly what they like.

"You can't fire me! The The Flying Spaghetti Monster and his apostle the BoFH, demand that I take everyone's HR records and bank details so that they can be cleansed of any ill gotten gains."

Private life

When at work, it is fair that an employer expects certain standards of behaviour and may require conformance to some dress code. However, everything that happens outside of work is none of the employer's concern, as long as it is legal and does not involve the company name (e.g. like wearing a company uniform to a political or religious event). Whether it is religious beliefs, sexual preference or membership of an S&M club, all of this stuff is part of an employees private life. The employer's opinion or moral attitude to someone else's private life has nothing to do with their performance at work. It doesn't matter whether or not someone thinks spiritualism is a religion - it has nothing to do with work.

The one exception would be where a church employs someone like a vicar or priest - in that case, it is reasonable to require that they actually follow the religion.

Of course, the flip side to this is that is is not unreasonable to expect employees to keep their private beliefs and practises to themselves while they are at work.

@qwertyuiop, lglethal, keddaw

@qwertyuiop

"Buddha is respected as a great teacher but he is *not* a god and Buddhists don't worship him. So by your definition Buddhism is not a religion."

Correct. Its a philosophy.

@lglethal

"And religion is based in fact? Wow i missed that news bulletin.."

If there is no God then where did the universe come from?

@keddaw

The three major word religions, in chronological order are Judaism, Christianity, Islam.

"Judaism is a cult. It has too few followers to be considered major"

It is a religion because it has a God. This is not affected by the number of people who follow Judaism.

For Christs' (or gaia's) sake!

I'm bloody fed up with laws... why the hell have we got so many of them? Why do we keep ending up with more and more case law and other tribunal verdicts protecting people who are quite obviously weird?

The Sustainability Manager at the middle of the eco-case is quite clearly a maladjusted nutcase. Grainger should have sacked him on grounds that he'd fundamentally destroyed his own credibility and made himself unemployable. In other words: it's not to do with belief, it's to do with whether you look like a nutter or not.

For the vampire lady: you put stuff on the web, traceable to yourself, that broadcasts your private sex life all over the world, and are surprised when the school (!) you work at has a fit?

I very much doubt that any employee (well, those outside of certain establishments on the the Reeperbahn) would be much in favour with their bosses if they spurted details of their sex life all over a globally accessible media source.

Pron actor chap? And you decide you want to work with kids? Have you not seen the daily Mail lately?

I'm all in favour of people being able to be porn stars or sub-dom vampire fantasists and stuff, but fundamentally they've chosen to live their lives in this way. Bully for them. Now live with the consequences of that choice.

Believe what you like, and do as you will, but accept the responsibility that comes with your choices, and don;t piss and moan when you come a cropper.

Law doesn't include Christianity, obviously

... as a series of cases of discrimination have made clear. But does include new agers?

We need an end to all these systems of privilege for favoured groups, and rather more freedom for all the rest of us; the freedom to speak our mind would be a nice one.

I'm confused.

Is political philosophy not philosophy now?

And is my belief that the fortunates (the rich/well-off and the able-bodied) should provide for the unfortunates (poor, disabled etc) a socialist political view, a socialist philosophical view or a Christian religious view?

Even if we can separate this trichotomy and have me as holding separate but identical political, philosophical and religious views, which of these traits is recessive and which dominant in the eyes of the courts? Does having a political view trump the philosophical and religious views and invalidate them in court or is it OK to have a political view that arises from a philosophy and still defend it on philosophical grounds.

Personally, I find the idea of a political policy that is not based on some form of philosophy kind of scary.

"Taxation of the rich -- because providing for the poor is the right thing to do!" is fair enough.

"No extra tax burden on the rich, because they're generating wealth and deserve to be rewarded for it" is also fair enough, although I'd personally vote against it.

But "taxation of the rich -- because... well... I don't know, it just kind of sounds good, doesn't it?" really is quite worrying.

Re: Needs to go further

Martin Proffitt Posted Monday 16th November 2009 11:00 GMT:

"About a year after this incident I appeared in court following a minor infraction and was asked to swear an oath on one of the major religions. I think the options were mainly Christianity, Muslim, Hindu and Judaism. There was no option for swearing an oath on anything else and I remember thinking to myself at the time, "If I swear on any of these I am effectively instantly committing perjury". Anything I say after this should really be discredited because I have already lied about something fundamental, yet if I had spoken up against it then I could be held in contempt."

I think I'm correct in saying you could have asked to simply affirm rather than swearing any oath in this case. This is the option offered to people who regard swearing oaths as bad news, eg Quakers. IIRC that's what I did on jury service.

@I think the point is

The problem is when they turn up and DON'T do the job. At the moment if they don't do the job because of a religous reason you can't fire them - with the new rule they can claim anything as a reason.

So "I can't work saturday cos God says so" means you have to give them the day off - with the new rules "I can't work saturday cos United are playing at home" is a philosophical belief.