After putting up my recent post on religion, "A Bitter Damaging Love." I received this comment on Facebook.
Hi, Loathe to go over the same old ground John but I find this kind of post at best very unhelpful and at worst extremely hurtful. I don't deny that for many people religion is a very bad experience but for many it is a positive thing. I'm not expecting you to agree. I just find it difficult to ignore this kind of post when it goes so much against my own experiences x
Hi,nobody can deny the personal experience that you get from religion and nobody can deny you your opinion, likewise me. My opinion is based on historical evidence that stretches back through the centuries and across the planet. Through the ages religion has a track record of persecuting those who dare to be different, even today religion is fighting a rearguard battle against gays, lesbians, birth control, and abortion, we have the “morality police” in Iran arresting and beating those whose dress code and behaviour doesn't fit their norm, and in that land of the free America, some family planning clinics have to have armed guards to protect their clients from violence and abuse from the faithful.As you run your finger across a map of the world lingering at points of extreme violence, you invariably find there is a religious split and no religion is exempt from the bloodshed. Even those nice, respect for all life, Buddhists, at this moment in time are marauding through Burma killing Muslims and burning their property. Not so long ago in the Balkans, the Catholic Croatians brutally “cleansed” their new country of Muslims and the Orthodox Christians did likewise in Serbia and so it goes on. All of them quite prepared to kill in the name of their peace loving god.Let's not forget what the Jews are doing today, to the Muslim Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank.The scandals of physical and sexual abuse of children in the care of the Catholic Church, is not an new phenomenon it has been part and parcel of that institution for as far back as you wish to go. According to Sarah Ruden in her book, Paul Among the People: in the first chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans, the Apostle severely criticized pedophiles as well as homosexuals for their unnatural, cruel, and rebellious acts against God and humanity. The date and name slip my mind at the moment but I believe it was in the 17 century the Pope of that day called for all those priests who sexually abuse young children, to be driven from the Church. In 1871, in Australia, a young nun, Mary Mackillop, witnessed a pedophile priest molesting a boy. When she reported it to the Catholic hierarchy, they threw her out of the convent and excommunicated her.All the good deeds that are done on this planet can be done by ordinary people without the need of all powerful Gods, who invariably cause divisions. Hierarchy and tradition stifle freedom of thought and action. Over the years I have written quite a few articles on on religion, all of them critical, and at the age of 79 I have in no way changed my opinion, I still see religion as one of the main causes of division and violence on this planet. Yes there are other institutions that have savaged humanity, that in no way mitigates the damage done by religion, it merely lumps them together.
I completely agree with your answer.
ReplyDeleteIf political boundaries are an obstacle for understanding between human beings, borders fostered by religion are much worse yet.
We have to hope that in the future this dark period of humanity is overcome and seen for what it really is: the decline of intelligence.
No, Serbia is not ethnically cleansed of its minorities. There are many minorities living there and in the non-Kosovo part which didn't have non-Serb militias there was NO ethnic cleansing and Muslims and Croats weren't even fired from their jobs.
ReplyDeleteYou have a lot of Muslims living in Southwest Serbia - Novi Pazar, for example, and Croats, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and more live in northern Serbia.
In Belgrade there are thousands of Muslims who live there and during the bombing there was were no attacks on the Albanian-owned sweet/pastry shops.
The wars were engineered by the west which used separatists as proxies. They wanted to divided Yugoslavia into little ethnically pure or divided statelets to be easier to control or digest into the EU. Also certain countries like Germany, Austria and also the Vatican never liked the Catholics being in a state with Serbs. Germany and Austria invaded Serbia and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs in WWI and WWII.
The British were always false allies and British communist mole, Jew James Klugmann, gave commie Tito false credit for royalists attacks against the Nazis. The British would rather have Serbs under communism than free. The BBC has for many decades promoted lies and hate against Serbs.
And that isn't even mentioning Islamic countries interference.
I agree that the West engineered the Balkan war to gain control of Yugoslavia, my short piece may have been a simplification of the situation in that area, but that doesn't detract from my central point that religion is and has always been, one of the biggest obstacles to human freedom and peace on this planet. I don't exempt Islam in any way, it is just another religion, just as brutal as the others, and another shackle on human progress.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the West engineered the Balkan war to gain control of Yugoslavia, my short piece may have been a simplification of the situation in that area, but that doesn't detract from my central point that religion is and has always been, one of the biggest obstacles to human freedom and peace on this planet. I don't exempt Islam in any way, it is just another religion, just as brutal as the others, and another shackle on human progress.
ReplyDelete