Noah Lugeons - Outbreak: A Crisis of Faith: How Religion Ruined Our Global Pandemic

OUTBREAK

Copyright 2020 by Puzzle In A Thunderstorm LLC

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

www.scathingatheist.com

OUTBREAK:

A Crisis of Faith

HOW RELIGION RUINED OUR GLOBAL PANDEMIC

Noah Lugeons
with Andrew Torrez

For the victims

AUTHORS NOTE

This book was written between April 13th and May 4th of 2020. Over the following months, it underwent a series of revisions, corrections, proof readings, and formatting changes that stand between a first draft and publication. Of course, the news cycle was not kind enough to pause for that process. Obviously, the situation at the heart of this work has worsened considerably since the first week of May.

This led, inevitably, to a series of questions about revision. Should the examples in the book be updated as more relevant or more egregious examples become available? Should the book be expanded to make room for all of the new information? Should the naive optimism about our chances at national strategy be deleted?

Ultimately, though many changes were made over those months, they were limited to formatting, syntax, and creative choices. No new information or examples were added. The reasoning was twofold: Each addition, revision, or update would have, to some extent, restarted the clock on publication. The very nature of a published work demands that the information be outdated. Any cutoff date would be arbitrary as this story has no end. Ultimately, the earliest possible cutoff was chosen. This allowed for the quickest path from finished work to publication, and because the arguments in the book are time sensitive, it was deemed more important to be quick than exhaustive.

The second reason was one of historical perspective. As the early days of this crisis recede, they stand to be overshadowed by the catastrophic failures that preceded them. The very depth of our failure makes it seem inevitable, a fact that threatens to obscure how avoidable the worst of this epidemic was. While expanding the book would have allowed for a grander perspective, there are times when a narrower perspective is called for. A good argument can be made that this historical keyhole is worth peering through at length.

Noah Lugeons
7/30/2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is only by historical happenstance that books have authors while films have credits. The collaborative effort of this work could easily have justified the latter. My friends and business partners Eli Bosnick, Heath Enwright, and Andrew Torrez were at least as instrumental in this works completion as I was. Eli Bosnick provided the spark of inspiration that started the project and aided with research throughout the writing process. Heath Enwrights technical and artistic mastery of the English language were invaluable resources, and are the only reason the semicolons in this book had even a hope of proper placement. Andrew Torrezs legal expertise will be most notable in the preface, which he wrote, but also informs the entire work.

I am also deeply indebted to the indefatigable work of Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist blog, which will be cited repeatedly throughout the book. I relied on scores of resources while writing this book but none were as useful as his blog, which acted as a nearly comprehensive media timeline throughout the process. I must also acknowledge the contribution of Liz Rosenberg, whose input not only made this a better book, but made me a better writer.

Most of all, I would like to acknowledge the great sacrifices I asked of my wife throughout the process of drafting and redrafting this work. As my business partners stepped up to cover my occupational workload, my life partner stepped up to cover my domestic one. Her emotional support and encouragement remain my most precious resources.

CONTENTS

Thus, a cake artist who serves all people ... cannot be forced to create wedding cakes that celebrate marriages at odds with his faith.

-Supreme Court Brief of Appellant Jack C. Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop, drafted by the Alliance Defending Freedom and filed on September 16, 2017

From Yoder to RFRA

There are approximately 40,000 people with the surname Yoder in the US, become a household word? The answer is the First Amendment.

Now, the average high school student this is what we call foreshadowing! can quote from memory at least the first part of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. to prohibit the free exercise of religion.

On the one hand, there are a bunch of easy answers to this question. If the government were to pass a law that made it illegal to be Christian, for example, that would obviously prohibit the free exercise of religion in a way that plainly offends the First Amendment. But that extreme example isnt really helpful, first, because governments are rarely and people rarely, if ever, decide to oppress themselves. Rather, what legislators tend to do is pass laws that reflect their latent prejudices; that is, laws that seem neutral on their face but apply unevenly when it comes to certain religious beliefs but not others.

Consider the state of Connecticut. Until 1940, that state had a law against disturbing the peace that prohibited soliciting money... for any alleged religious cause unless that cause had been approved in advance by the secretary of the Public Welfare Council.

That seems pretty unfair. If youre going to have a law prohibiting religious proselytizing, that law shouldnt apply selectively; it should either outlaw soliciting money to support your church no matter what, or it shouldnt apply at all. And that is, in fact, what the Supreme Court decided when striking down this Connecticut law.

Okay, so we know that the First Amendments free exercise clause, broadly speaking, means that a state cant single out a particular religious group either by the specific words of the law or in practice. But what about neutral laws? Suppose, for example, that the cafeteria in a government building decides to order only pork chops for Fridays lunch. Thats obviously not the same as saying, We find Jehovahs Witnesses annoying but not the Salvation Army. But it does disproportionately burden people of different beliefs. Atheists and Protestants wont notice any difference, but Catholics who observe meatless Fridays, Jews who keep kosher, and practicing Muslims will all find themselves rather more hungry on Fridays. Similarly, a law requiring all students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance may not single out any one group for unfair treatment, but it will disproportionately burden atheists, Jehovahs Witnesses, and others.

So, does the Constitution forbid ordering pork chops? Does it require everyone to recite the Pledge? No. Instead, the mechanism that the Constitution (sometimes) uses in these situations is granting a religious exemption from an otherwise neutral law. The first major case to suggest the free exercise exception doctrine was called Sherbert v. Verner, In other words, the government treated her as having voluntarily quit her job, rather than having been fired.

The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Employment Security Commission (thats the Verner from the case name), ruling that the government should have made a minor accommodation for Ms. Sherberts religious beliefs.

This turned out to be the proverbial camels nose under the tent, and it is at this point that Amish farmer Jonas Yoder re-enters our story. Yoder became famous for accidentally telling the Supreme Court of the United States that his sincerely held religious beliefs were so stupid that they would instantly collapse under the scrutiny of the average high school student in rural Wisconsin. That probably sounds unnecessarily harsh, so lets quote Chief Justice Warren Burger (himself quoting Yoder) directly: