No, I dismiss it out of hand. Circumcision, home birth, etc blah blah blah ... this is a poor argument. Whether you are circumcised or your mother had a home bi

No, I dismiss it out of hand. Circumcision, home birth, etc blah blah blah ... this is a poor argument. Whether you are circumcised or your mother had a home birth has not affect on others that I am aware. If those silly examples did have such effects on others then sure they should be measured in the same way. Religious beliefs can logically be made of exactly the set of any possible utterance. A religious belief can easily be that you don't believe people of a certain race should exist or what have you. Do we call that "complex" issue and just let be simply because it is the result of a religious utterance? No, that's ridiculous. In order to have a functioning society we must be pragmatic and not limit the scope of how religious utterances affect society as a whole. As far as your "conscientious objector" example, do you seriously think that in a situation where a truly significant percentage of people held that view AND it was tolerated by society that a country such as the US with its constitution that you are citing could exist? Sure, since it is an insignificant number then it is accepted and has no appreciable effect on society but if it meant that the country would not be able to sustain a military, things would be quite different. Things are more complex but not because we can simply cite religious utterances willy-nilly but because we want to sustain societies and there must be a level of cooperation among individuals.