The God Delusion

The God Delusion - de Richard Dawkins
Capítulo I


"A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts - the non-religious included - is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect any human being should pay to any other."

"Here's another weird example of the privileging of religion: on 21 February 2006 The United States Supreme Court ruled, (...) that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. Faithfull members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente União do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federeal prosecution.

"As a typical example, in 2004 James Nixon, a twelve-year-old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a t-shirt to school bearing the words "Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!" The school told him not to wear the t-shirt - and the boy's parents sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable case if they had based it on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speach. But they didn't. Instead, the Nixon's lawyers appealed to the constitutional right to freedom of religion. Their victorious lawsuit was supported by the Alliance Defense Fund of Arizona, whose business it is to press the legal battle for religious freedom."

Mais informação (e capítulo I completo) em
http://www.richarddawkins.net/