Daniel Goldman

A Rebuttal to “Is Religion Useful…” by Genetically Modified Skeptic

By alcanthro Leave a Comment Nov 12

Religion is useful, but Genetically Modified Skeptic misses the real point and fails to understand a lot about the scientific study of religion.

I might have to edit this rebuttal later, because I am writing it while a little ticked off at having lost the entire thing when I accidentally closed the tab I was writing in, but Genetically Modified Skeptic makes a number of incorrect claims about religion that really need to be addressed. There are three main ideas that I want to address for now. The first is the idea that something has no real merit if something else can provide the same or similar benefit. The second is the citation of a poorly conducted study on religiosity and altruism. The third is religiosity among scientists. I am not going to cite many scientific studies directly in this article, but my other articles that I cite do link to specific peer reviewed literature used to justify my positions.

The first one is simple. Maybe there are other institutions besides religion which provides benefits similar to the ones religion provides. I would say that any collectivist system provides many of the benefits that organized religion does. But religion does offer a lot of different benefits that might be achievable only through multiple other means. First, organized religion induces altruistic tendencies by connecting sacrifice and some kind of religious belief, such as that of an afterlife. Ancient Egypt, for instance, was highly redistributive society, and that was largely maintained by the idea that the Pharaoh was a god. Religion also tends to have some kind of artificial kin system. This can stem from a creation myth, or the use of familial terms in religious practices such as brother, sister, mother, father, etc. This artificial kin system piggybacks off of the existing psychology of kin altruism. A benefit which does seem to be specific to religion, or religion like beliefs is analgesic enhancement. Indeed, I specifically mention “An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system” in my description of what constitutes a religion. It may be that other beliefs have a similar effect, but it has not been shown.

GMS mentions Decety et. al. 2015, a study which looks at the relationship between altruism and religiosity. This study is highly flawed for a number of reasons. First, it uses religious self identification. Unless everyone agrees on what religion is, self identification does not actually measure true religiosity. The study also tends to conflate atheism with non-religion, but this is incorrect. Because of these two mistakes, the study defines China as being essentially non-religious, but religious self identification in China is dangerous, and even illegal for members of the communist party. Many Chinese believe in afterlives, ancestral spirits, and especially vital life force, which is one reason why traditional Chinese medicine is still so important in China. Therefor all we can ascertain from the study is that those who identify with specific known major religions tend to be less altruistic, not that religion and religiosity are negatively associated.

GMS then jumps to war. He seems to indicate a high degree of relationship between war and religion, but as I mention in “The Pervasive Nature of Religiophobia,” most war is not causd by religion. Also, people need to be aware of emic vs etic perspectives. The emic perspective is what those within a culture believe, while the etic perspective is the scientific perspective on the nature of cultural practices. For instance, within a culture, people might believe that a harvest festival ingratiates the people with the gods, while the etic perspective is that it helps unify the people for a successful harvest. I do not wish to go into politics too much on this site, but religion and war are political. It is argued that ISIS et. al. are the result of radical Islam, but in all honesty, that does not make sense. It does not explain why radical Islam exists where it does and why it emerged when it did. But as I explain in “Middle East Turmoil: Radical Islam or Reaction to Imperialism?” there is a parsimonious answer to the aforementioned questions: radical Islam is a direct response to and rally against western imperialism.

Regarding polytheism and religious war, it did not happen all that much. Polytheists tended to merge pantheons readily. While cities within a polytheistic culture might have had a patron deity that they were proud of, there was little forced conversion. The other polytheists accepted the other gods, they just did not worship them as much as heir own patron deity. It is also incorrect to assign religion to the cause of war campaigns in Rome, etc, which while brutal, were about gaining resources, not about religious conversion.

Finally, GMS mentions religiosity among scientists. First off, there have been many brilliant scientists who were religious, including Sir Isaac Newton. There still are many, including Freeman Dyson. There is nothing inherently anti-scientific about religion, though there are dogmatic religious elements which do contradict science. The real issue is two fold. One thing is that religiosity may be under reported, as Religious Rejectionism seems to be more common among the academics. Religious Rejectionism is a religion, as classified by the unified model of religion that I cited earlier. The belief that there are no gods does seem to be religioid, as identified by multiple fMRI studies. The belief is integrated with numerous cultural dimensions from Smart’s seven dimensions of religion. But there is another issue beyond failure to identify Religious Rejectionism. As I mentioned in my discussion of Religiophobia, academia itself rejects Christians. It discriminates against Christians and the stigma reduces the ability for Christian students to learn, as the ability for Christian scientists to be hired. Additionally, Christianity, and organized religion itself has more utility when one is of lower socioeconomic status. Therefore a person who is from a lower class is more likely to be Christian, but that same person is less likely to excel in academia and therefore less likely to become a scientist.

Overall, Genetically Modified Skeptic uses much of the same invalid reasoning that other New Atheist religiophobes use to attack religion. It is at best poor science and at worst dogmatic ignorance. While there are issues with highly dogmatic religions, and much of the same can be said about a lot of highly collectivist systems, the arguments that he presents are just bad. I am not arguing that we should all go out and become religious. For one thing, we cannot control our own beliefs; we can only make decisions which affect them. Personally, I cannot accept any position which does not have a scientific and mathematical justification, up to axiom, and choose axioms based on what seems like the only way to make decisions in life. I am not religious, and as long as my view on reality does not change, I never will be. But to each his or her own, so long as that world view is not forced upon me.

Further Reading

  • Infinite In All Directions (Amazon)

The post A Rebuttal to “Is Religion Useful…” by Genetically Modified Skeptic appeared first on The Spiritual Anthropologist.

What Would an Eternal (After)life Feel Like?

By alcanthro Leave a Comment Sep 6

Certain people who argue against the existence of an eternal afterlife like to argue that it would feel like “hell” or that we cannot even imagine it. I disagree. There are ways that we can guess what it would be like, and to find a clue to this question, all one needs is a little bit of calculus.

While it might be hard to imagine certain aspects of an afterlife, such as what it would literally feel like, if we do not have bodies, the eternity question is fairly easy to address. Consider our own lifetime to start. As a child, summer vacation used to last forever. Or at least it felt like it did to me. By the time high school rolled around, it did not feel anywhere near as long. As we get older, it seems that the days, weeks, months, and even years just fly by, and on longer timescales, this sense feeling has been identified as being fairly common as people age (Scientific American). This change in view makes sense as we experience longer periods of time. If we can extend this feeling to eternity, we can actually estimate how long eternity would seem.

Of course, the actual result depends on a few assumptions. But consider our one lifetime as a start. Suppose each equivalent amount of time from then on feels like 90% of the last amount. As an example, suppose we lived to 100 and the first 100 years of our afterlife felt like 90 years, our second 100 felt like 81 years, and so on. Even though we would still be living forever, the sum 100 + 90 + 81 + … + 0.9^n * 100 + … has a finite sum. This type of series is called a geometric series, and the infinite sum turns out to be 1000, or 10 lifetimes. The exact length depends on the fraction by which each unit of time feels shortened.

There are other progressions which are also finite, and there progressions which do not converge to a finite sum. But if we can extend our experiences in life to our experience in an afterlife, it does seem like eternity would not feel like it would last forever. Therefore any argument that rejects an eternal afterlife based on the notion of a torturous never ending existence can be seen as being too limited to hold water. One would first have to show that our experience in the afterlife is not modeled by this diminishing perceived-time phenomenon.

Further Reading

  • Arguments against Anti-Theists and Theists

The post What Would an Eternal (After)life Feel Like? appeared first on The Spiritual Anthropologist.

Religion is an Illness and Evolution is Wrong (Not)

By alcanthro Leave a Comment Aug 19

Religion is not an illness. This short discussion provides one of many arguments as to why this is the case.It is true that a lot of members of our, and most other species, suffer from cancer, but it is still not ubiquitous nor does it exist throughout the individual’s life. If a species existed, in which all, or almost all of its members suffered from the same pathology, and that pathology showed up and existed throughout the organism’s life, and this pathology has always existed within the species, that violate natural selection enough to consider the current body of theory of evolution falsified.

To be clear, it is recognized that natural selection is not the only process which occurs during evolution, but it is pretty safe to say that enough of our body of theory on evolution rests with the validity of natural selection that if natural selection were falsified, so would the body as a whole, and we would need to rework our theories.

Consider what is said in Evolutionary dynamics in structured populations.

An evolving population consists of reproducing individuals, which are information carriers. When they reproduce, they pass on information. New mutants arise if this process involves mistakes. Natural selection emerges if mutants reproduce at different rates and compete for limiting resources.

In other words, evolutionary dynamics implies natural selection. A violation of natural selection therefore would make the current theory on evolutionary dynamics less likely. Now, it could be that other processes are so powerful that they completely override natural selection, but to find a species in which natural selection has totally failed to weed out a near universal illness should present a problem for current evolutionary theory. This is how science works. If an observation is unlikely, under the assumption that a theory is true, then we consider the theory to be unlikely.

Now, it has been claim by some, including Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, that religion is a mental illness. Consider one of his tweets from 2014. I have included an archive of the tweet here, in case it is ever deleted. But in stating this notion, he argues against evolution itself, as religion is nearly ubiquitous. It exists in almost every member of the species, and has since the dawn of anatomically modern humans. It is found, in members of the population, from childhood until death. This condition would be very unlikely, if natural selection was in operation. And therefore, if we assume that Dawkins’ statement is true, we must conclude that evolutionary theory, as we view it now, is unlikely.

Interestingly, we can also define “illness” in terms of evolutionary theory: a collection of traits is an illness if it reduces the ability for that collection of trait to be passed on in future generations. This is a simplistic version, as traits interact with one another. But it is still useful. If a collection of traits increases the overall fertility and lifespan of an organism, and decreases infant mortality, it would be hard to argue that it can be an illness. When it comes to religion, the theory that religious affiliation improves fertility and life expectancy, while decreasing infant mortality, is consistent with available data, at least in the case of developing nations.

In Religion, Fertility and Genes: a Dual Inheritance Model, Robert Rowthorn addresses findings on the increase in fertility in religiously affiliated groups. Rowthorn looks at the genetic aspect of religiosity and fertility. He argues that, given multiple groups, “the genes associated with the high-fertility group may eventually predominate in the overall gene pool.” In this case, those genes are those which result in a predisposition towards religion. Overall the idea is that predisposition to religiosity and the religiosity of a group have a positive interplay on fertility, thus perpetuating the genetic predisposition and the religious group. This view is consistent with he models constructed by Rowthorn and his comparison to empirical data. (Rowthorn 2011) Meanwhile, in Religious attendance: more cost-effective than lipitor? DE Hall shows that religious affiliation seems to have a significant impact on life expectancy, with an approximate number of years gained ranging from two to three years, roughly consistent with the gain from exercise and statin related medications (Hall DE 2006). Meanwhile, according to Religious Affiliation and Under-five Mortality in Mozambique, religious affiliation, regardless of the religion, had a positive outcome on reducing under-five infant mortality. One of the potential mechanisms for this effect was theorized to be increase access to healthcare services through certain religious affiliations. Furthermore, “while the survival chances of children of Catholics/mainline Protestant and Apostolics were significantly higher than those of children of non-affiliated women, the differences among religious denominations were not statistically significant after controlling for other factors. (Boaventura M. Cau et. al. 2012)

The three studies, combined, show that findings are consistent with the view that religiosity, or at least religious affiliation, increases life expectancy and fertility, while decreasing infant mortality. The findings are inconsistent with the idea that religiosity or religious affiliation has a negative impact on these conditions. As a result, if the definition of illness mentioned above is to be accepted, then the notion that religion is an illness, of any sort, must be rejected. Furthermore, unless there was some other evolutionary mechanism that was powerful enough to override natural selection for hundreds of thousands of years, either religion is not an illness or our view of evolution must be flawed. Therefore it can be concluded, with a reasonable level of justification, that religion is not an illness.

Further Reading

  • A Unified Psychological and Anthropological Model of Religion
  • Rebuttal to Faith and Belief: Remnants of Our Ancestry Used to Enslave Our Minds

The post Religion is an Illness and Evolution is Wrong (Not) appeared first on The Spiritual Anthropologist.

Rebuttal to Faith and Belief: Remnants of Our Ancestry Used to Enslave Our Minds

By alcanthro Leave a Comment Aug 11

Faith and Belief: Remnants of Our Ancestry Used to Enslave Our Minds, by Glen Vickers, attempts to look at the evolutionary psychology of religion, but fails miserably. It had the potential to be a solid work, however it could have benefited from better fact checking, a more skilled copy editor, and the reliance on citation. It also suffers from clear biases against religion, expressed by the author, rather than scientific objectivity. 

If the author pushed himself to use citation to back up his material, he may not have made so many errors. As it stands, this book is largely a perpetuation of pseudoscience and pseudohistory and is also an example of blatant plagiarism. If the content were at least decent, I could get past the poor quality of writing: the spelling errors, use of incorrect homophones, sentence fragments, run on sentences, and more. After all, I admit that I am not the best writer. However, the content of Faith and Belief does not make up for the poor writing. The following is an overall review and rebuttal of the work. I want to start with the structural issues of the book.

The most glaring issue is the repeated contradictions within the text. Even someone who is not familiar with the topic should be able to pick up on these inconsistencies. The the beginning of the book, the author states that “religion is defined as the belief in a higher power.” But then on the very next page, he asserts that “the literal definition of religion is the belief in a deity or to have a set doctrine.” (pp. 15 – 16) When discussing monotheistic religions, he first claims that “the Jewish faith is the oldest known monotheistic faith on current records.” He follows this with a the assertion: “[Judaism was] not the first monotheistic religion to document their belief and create holy books which claim to be written by the prophets of god.” He then continues on by suggesting that “archeological findings on early civilizations suggest that all religions began as a monotheistic tradition.” (pp. 96 – 90)

Finally, the author seems to want to claim that there is no universal objective morality (pp. 34- 35). And admittedly the existence of one has not been well argued. But he then continues to address the topic of rape and other related actions as immoral, and seems to do so in a way that suggests that such actions are inherently, objectively, and universally immoral.

If the author had provided citations for the last point, I might buy it, but either way, the chain of reasoning is contradictory. If monotheistic traditions preceded polytheistic ones, then either Judaism was the first religion or was not the first monotheistic one. This back and forth continues for the next few pages. The lack of citations is ironic, considering this following point that the author made.

You can trust the delivery of knowledge from a person as much as you can trust the delivery of knowledge from the written word. Claims can be made by both the written word and the spoken word. The difference between the deliveries does not matter as much as the source of the knowledge and the evidence to support the You can trust the delivery of knowledge from a person as much as you can trust the delivery of knowledge from the written word. Claims can be made by both the written word and the spoken word. The difference between the deliveries does not matter as much as the source of the knowledge and the evidence to support the knowledge. (pp. 103 – 104)

The author recognizes the importance of the source of the knowledge and the evidence to “support” it, but fails to provide citations. Of less significance is the repeated issues with grammar and spelling. There are numerous sentence fragments and run on sentences. One of many examples is as follows: “It seems that the only species that makes moral decisions for survival of a species is humans. At least on this planet, we can’t speak for any other life in the universe.” (pg. 29) There are also misused homophones, such as the use of manor rather than manner (pg. 93). Again, if the content made up for the poor quality of writing, I would not mind. But that is not the case.

The most important failure of the text is the presence of scientifically and historically inaccurate information. This includes the perpetuation of the historically inaccurate view that Medieval Europe viewed the Earth as flat. More importantly the author has a poor understanding of early human development. Finally there is a similar misrepresentation of the history of the development of religion and literalist vs interpretationist stances on the bible.

Starting with the most benign misconception, according to the author, it has “been less than 600 years since we discovered that our earth was not flat” (pg. 14). However, according to current historical understanding, this was not the case. In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Burton Russell tears apart the historically falsified myth that the medieval world thought the Earth was flat. He also explains how the argument that Columbus set out to settle was not whether the Earth was flat or round, but rather how big it was. Modern history books no longer include this myth, but it is likely that the author was taking classes before the corrections occurred in the 80s.

Later on, the author claims that “religion existed when we lived in caves” (pg. 33). While according to current theory religion did exist during the paleolithic period (citation needed) the view that humans lived in caves is not an archaeologically valid statement. With a few exceptions, early humans did not live in caves. They did engage in certain rituals involving caves, but that was generally the extent of their interaction with the environment. (A Caveman’s Home was Not a Cave). This view of early human brings me to another related point. The author repeatedly uses the word “primitive.” I will try to add further citation later, but a Reddit AskAnthropology Q&A does a fairly good job of explaining the issue: “primitive” is a poorly defined term which, in terms of looking at groups of people, was developed as a way to expressing a false sense of superiority over other groups. (Reddit AskAnthropology)

The author’s lack of understanding of early humans creates other issues. Part way through the second chapter, the author invokes the concept of the alpha male, saying that if a person survived and became the alpha male, he is now the leader of the tribe (pg 73). There are a number of issues with this position. The existence of alpha males in humans is not well accepted and is not part of the current body of scientific theory. The are a number of sources which address the topic, including Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, Limited Wants, Unlimited Means, “Are Alpha Males Myth or Reality,” “The myth of the alpha male,” and “Play as a Foundation of Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence.” The final source is quick to point out that early human populations were not tribal but rather exited in mobile bands with fluid membership. Overall, when it comes to the development of modern humans, I think the author would benefit from reviewing a basic anthropology textbook. Transition from a fluid collection of small bands to complex societies with leaders is even addressed in intro anthropology texts like Principles of Archaeology.

I touched on the issue of the author’s lack of understanding and clarity on the development of religion, when I mentioned the repeated contradictions in his discussion of monotheism and polytheism. Another issue is that the author seems to view interpretationist policy of the bible as a rather new development. However, Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis gives us a solid example of opposition to literal interpretations of the bible, which far predates modern thought. Ælfric of Eynsham was a monk and writer.  He was asked to translate the bible from Latin into Old English, as very few could read Latin, in England, by that point in time. (The Ælfric of Eynsham Project: An Introduction) However, Ælfric was cautious about engaging in such an act. While he could not disobey the king’s request, he provided a preface to his translation. Within the phrase, Ælfric writes the following: “we also said before that the book is very profoundly spiritual in understanding and we will write no more than the naked narrative. Then it seems to the unlearned that all that meaning is locked up in the simple narrative, but it is very far from it.” This is a recognition that a purely literal understanding of the “naked word” is not enough. (Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis: A Translation)

Overall, I am glad that I picked up a copy of this book, not because it was informative in terms of the evolution and function of religion, but rather it gives me additional insight into the minds of people like Dr. Glen Vickers. It also allowed me to touch on some common misconceptions about human evolutionary history, the evolution of religion, and other falsified “secular” myths that are still perpetuated by some members of the population.

Further Reading

The following are a few texts which are related to the topics mentioned in this article. Many of the books have been useful to me in the past.

  • Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
  • Archaeological Laboratory Methods
  • Ecclesiastical History of the English People
  • Towards Being Secular

The post Rebuttal to Faith and Belief: Remnants of Our Ancestry Used to Enslave Our Minds appeared first on The Spiritual Anthropologist.

Understanding Taxation of Religious Organizations

By politicoid Leave a Comment Jul 19

There is a not of misinformation regarding the taxation of religious organizations. I assume most of it is unintentional and simply due to ignorance, but it must be addressed.

First off, religious institutions are not tax exempt. 501(c)(3) not profit charities are tax exempt. Many, but not all religious institutions qualify for that tax exempt status and do not have to pay taxes on revenue which is related to their charitable activities. They still have to pay taxes on other revenue, which means that not all revenue to religious institutions, even tax exempt ones, is untaxed. However, the common rhetoric by institutions like American Atheists and Atheist Republic are that churches are being subsidized by the government. It’s true that in some limited cases religious institutions receive some government funding. This is true for grants to church run food pantries, but again, they are grants towards running food pantries, not religious activities. The rest of what they call “subsidies” is really nothing more than religious institutions paying less in taxes.

A subsidy is payment to reduce the expense of something. Refusing to take a certain amount from someone or something is not a subsidy. They are a world apart. Without the outside institution giving a subsidy, the cost would be higher. Without the outside institution taxing, expenses would be lower. Furthermore, these anti-religious organizations often cite a very flawed study on the topic. “Research Report: How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States” by Ryan T. Cragun, Stephanie Yeager, and Desmond Vega shows either a complete lack of understanding of corporate finance and taxation or a complete disregard for it.

And yet this study is repeatedly cited as a way to attack religious institutions. As just one example of the flawed methodology, the study claims a $35B federal tax subsidy. Ignoring that tax breaks are not subsidies (otherwise every time you mark down a deduction on your tax return you would be getting a subsidy), the figure simply takes the total estimated revenue for the church and multiplies it by the top marginal tax rate. There are a few issues here. The study at least admits that it is assuming that using the top marginal tax bracket is reasonable, although it does little to justify that claim. Second, corporate taxes are graduated, just like personal income tax. Corporations do not pay the highest corporate tax rate multiplied by the total revenue. This brings us to the next flaw. Corporations are not taxed on revenue. They are taxed on profit. In other words, it would also be necessary to calculate how much of the revenue goes to payroll, resources for charitable activities, etc.

Finally, the study fails to take into account how a shift in taxation status of these institutions would impact contributions and charitable activities. Likely many religious institutions would cease to exist. That would mean a lot of new unemployed people who would have to either find new jobs in an already depressed job market or live off of welfare, thus defeating a lot of the purpose of eliminating the tax advantaged status.

Of course, the whole argument is a bit hypocritical, as American Atheists and many other institutions take advantage of the same tax breaks, falling into the 501(c)(3) non profit organization group. What these groups really want is to have religious organizations excluded from the exemptions, even though that would be discrimination based on religiosity.

Government Funding

Other arguments relating to this topic include claims that if religious organizations were taxed, it would have a significant impact on the government’s ability to function. In 2012, total government expenditures amounted to roughly $6T. Even if I were to accept the $100B tax loss calculation that the aforementioned study claims exists, that would account for roughly 2% of total government spending. Additionally, a good chunk of tax revenue goes to funding illegal wars and committing outright acts of terror. Perhaps before seeking additional ways to fund the government, Atheist Republic et. al. should be seeking to change how government spends the money it already has.

Further Reading

  • The Johnson Amendment

 

The post Understanding Taxation of Religious Organizations appeared first on Politicoid.

The Johnson Amendment

By politicoid Leave a Comment Jul 14

The Johnson Amendment is seen as a legal tool for limiting religion. But it is actually not specific to religious institutions at all. Yet it is often applied disproportionately, especially when it comes to cases with ambiguity such as NPR’s indirect politicking.

Constitutionality

There are a few issues with the Johnson Amendment. The first is that it was poorly conceived in the first place. It was a reaction to a non profit organization badmouthing Lyndon B. Johnson while he was running for his senate position. The second issue is that it is unconstitutional. It creates a conflict between the First Amendment and the Sixteenth Amendment. Conflicts between amendments must be dealt with in the least restrictive way. This is the general practice when dealing with conflicts in contracts (Stack Exchange). The least restrictive way of dealing with the conflict would be to eliminate the legislative act creating the conflict. This is reasonable because legislative acts always take lower priority than a provision in the constitution.

Hypocrisy

Another minor issue is the one that I have with institutions like American Atheists. It is clear that their issue is with religion, and not with upholding the Johnson Amendment. For one thing, many of their followers think that the law prevents all religious institutions from engaging in politicking. This often coincides with the incorrect belief that no religious institutions pay taxes. That is not true. Only 501(c)(3) non profit organizations are prevented from politicking and it is that status which protects many churches from paying taxes. But that also means that every other 501(c)(3) non profit entity should be blocked from politicking.

But NPR has generally been immune from this restriction. Part of this immunity derives from the ambiguity regarding what constitutes politicking. Direct support or opposition of a candidate, engaging in activities to help fundraising for a candidate, etc are clearly politicking. NPR does not engage in any of these activities. However, it goes well beyond simple reporting. It editorializes candidates and parties. There is a clear track record of being critical of Republican candidates and politicians.

There is a distinction reporting and editorializing. If a candidate’s actions, positions, etc are editorialized in a positive or negative way, this should reasonably be considered politicking. There is no difference between repeatedly editorializing a candidate in a positive way and endorsing that candidate. If an institution said “candidate X will be great for this country, everything we ever wanted will come true” that is an endorsement if candidate X, even if they never come out directly and say “vote for candidate X.” I pushed Atheist Republic on this issue after a tweet on the topic, but the admin of the Twitter account went silent.

Further Reading

  • The First Amendment
  • The Fifth Amendment

 

The post The Johnson Amendment appeared first on Politicoid.

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