Actually, you can claim that your beliefs exempt you from taxes and get away with it, but the privilege is negotiated in the real world with real influences.
My friend, I mean no disrespect but you remind me of a younger me. I was a teenage agnostic, but the politics were too convenient...
I’m sure you want folks to take a medical treatment you believe will help them and others but we live in a diverse society that makes affordances for religious belief as a core pillar of our society.
Whether or not you want that to be so is not germane to the issue of how one, here and now, is presented with an exemption from an otherwise mandatory government edict.
I think you've stated the problem quite well: it's not a question of freedom, it's a religious and political issue.
BTW, you shouldn't risk getting COVID. if I remind you of your younger self, you must be in the vulnerable age bracket because I'm 50.
All you have to do is ask if they're being consistent.
If they've taken all the vaccinations to this point but suddenly have an issue with this particular vaccine, then it's not a religious thing. Personally, I don't feel like it should matter whether a belief is fundamentally religious or not. The thing that matters is that a person believes it.
That said, if they aren't being consistent, then there's no reason to take them seriously.
Now, how much time must elapse before a religious change is true and sincere? A hard question to determine. For many, all it takes is a rock bottom moment in their life.
As for the second, no one said the “mark” has to be a literal mark. Many sects of many religions view large parts of scripture as allegorical or good general teachings for a coherent (if not imperfect, particularly based on modern secular norms) society.
No to be overly accusatory, but this all reminds me a bit of a young, agnostic me. The “well what about turning the other cheek” type of gotcha comment that ignores scripture that provides deeper context or contextual “contradiction.”
We live in a large and diverse world, and religion is ultimately a human system. We’re just never going to be able to nail it down to an instruction set as we may desire to do.