Sunday 5 August 2012

Keeping the Lid on Religion.

I made a post recently about the incident in Afghanistan in which a man shot his wife dead – with the full sanction of the local law – as punishment for her alleged infidelity. Other men stood around cheering and shouting ‘God is good.’

Today I read about another incident in Pakistan, in which the police forced a couple to walk naked to the police station for allegedly wanting to have extra-marital sex. The police were filmed beating the man while the woman begged to be allowed to cover herself. The officers involved have been suspended. They should be on trial for serious assault.

And so for once I’m going to praise western culture. I’m going to thank my lucky stars that I live in a secular state in which religion is kept, on an official level at least, in its rightful place.

Religious freedom must be tolerated, but it must also be a matter of personal choice. Any decent state must be secular because the alternative breeds monsters – depraved and stupid men who are encouraged to believe in their right to commit cruel, perverted acts in the name of a speculative god and a subjective belief system.

I said in a post a long time ago that indoctrinating children with religious dogma amounted to a form of child abuse. I believe it more than ever now.

4 comments:

Anthropomorphica said...

I agree. It's terrifying to me that there are people who use religion as a final unquestionable authority. The "righteous" who must be obeyed, who profess a God given right to abuse and kill. Those who follow, scare me even more.
It appears to be right across the board with the Judaic religions.

JJ said...

I know. It seems to have started when Yahweh somehow got promoted from sky god to dictator. I don't know who was responsible for that.

andrea kiss said...

Asherah needs to reemerge and get her man back in line!

JJ said...

It's odd, isn't it, how the Judaic religions (especially Judaism itself) place so much emphasis on marriage, while hiding the consort of their chief deity in the sand?