Constitutional Fix — Free Exercise of Conviction

One thing I'd change is this small detail in the 1st Amendment.

No establishment of religion, but free exercise of conviction. Or, if one prefers, conscience. This would be an expansion, subsuming all religious exercise as well as other exercise of conscientious convictions.

Free exercise of religion implies a privileged status for notions about the supernatural shared by groups and there is no reason for it. IMO.

Whatever a person feels compelled by religion to do could be compelled by simple conviction.

And non-religious conviction is no less worthy.

An atheist vegetarian is no less a vegetarian than a 7th Day Adventist, and often no less morally motivated. Should the two be legally distinct? An atheist anti-war person is no less legitimately pacific than a Quaker. And so on.

With contientious objector status in the draft we did allow such non-religious exemptions because it just makes sense. (Though it was much harder for a non-believer to get that status than a Quaker, which is wrong, IMO.)


However, government establishment of conviction (unlike religion) is okay. Hence the proposed asymmetry. The state can and should have some moral notions—though not derived from any mystical revelation. For instance, teaching kids in school that murder is bad is establishment of conviction.