Freedom Of or Freedom From

As I was driving home yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said:

There can be no freedom of religion without freedom from religion.

I couldn't help but comment to myself about the utter foolishness of such a claim. A more correct bumper sticker would have said:

There can be no freedom of any kind without religion.

Think about it for a moment. The only reason we have freedom to do the things we want, is because our society has adopted laws which restrain other people from interfering with our freedoms. In order to have laws we must as a society have some form of recognition of right and wrong, and there is no right and wrong without God.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom, because there are certain freedoms you can't have unless you take freedom away from others. We are free to hold our own property, but we are not free to take away our neighbors' because in a truly free society our freedom must end where theirs begins.

So when you go back to the original claim on the bumper sticker, you can no longer ignore its enslaving demand that I and everyone else must give up our religions so that they will never be confronted by them.

I'm afraid that if you want freedom from religion you are going to have leave the United States, because I will fight to the death to keep my freedom OF religion.


James :)