Ethical dilemmas around religious exemption

In a previous post, I looked at the possibility of being granted a religious exemption from using AI. This raises a possible dilemma: if people of conscience can get religious exemptions from harmful activities like war and other forms of causing suffering to others, how is that different from allowing bigots to opt out of registering same-sex marriages, or baking a cake for same-sex weddings, or allowing anti-vaxxers to opt out of getting vaccines?

One possible safeguard in the process would be that there is a threshold that people have to meet to show that their objection to participation in the activity is grounded in their theology and ethics. That’s why the Unitarian Universalist who got an exemption from using AI got help with her case from the minister of her church.

Quakers, Mennonites and other pacifist religions and philosophies should be able to refuse to kill people. Anyone who wants to refuse to use AI on the grounds of conscience should be allowed to not use it and keep their job. AI has already been used to target civilians to be killed in Gaza. It’s already causing huge environmental damage. It’s already causing conditions similar to slave labour in parts of the world. It’s definitely an issue of conscience.

Objective and significant harms

There is a way that we can draw the line to exclude bigots from enjoying the same exemptions as people of conscience. The distinction is: can the activity objectively be shown to harm large numbers of people? In the case of war, AI, and the human and environmental cost of these activities — yes, these are objectively bad.

In the case of same-sex marriage (registering it or baking a cake for it): two people getting married harms no-one, and recognizing and celebrating same-sex marriage prevents suffering in various ways, because it allows same-sex spouses to visit each other in hospital, and improves self-esteem for members of the LGBTQ+ community. (People who think it is “harmful” because it stresses them out to see two people in love do not meet the threshold of suffering required to claim an exemption.)

In the case of vaccines, not getting vaccinated can and does harm other people, and is likely to harm the person refusing the vaccine as well. Though I note that most governments stopped short of mandating vaccines, possibly because of the legislative and policing burden that that would introduce.