Ban Religion - are you for or against it and why?

[reverendjeremiah]

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I too, can see the huge amount of harm that religious are causing throughout the world - because they are
anti-progress, and they take a lot of money and resources that would probably be better used elsewhere. It
uses a great deal of all religious people's time - some more than others. Whether it's praying 5 times per day
and you must stop work to do it, or it's against the religion to work on Sundays or other holy days, it takes
time. Whether it's $1 in a collection plate every time someone goes to church - whether daily or just on
Christmas. There's all of the money and artwork that the Vatican has hoarded. There are restrictions and
prohibitions and restrictions on all sorts of things in life, without any room to change for the
conditions. A great deal of wealth is permanently taken out of circulation to be put into religion - temples,
idols, icons, or stored for some sort of later use. What about nurses and fire fighters and other emergency personnel? What about the people who keep the power plant operating on Christmas night?) It leads to a great deal of violence and
hatred, between the national/international level and between people in the same area. It's another and
artificial form of "us" and "them". With large segments of the human populace in religions that expect
the world to end very soon, that God wants them to end it, it'll happen. To get good people to do evil
things requires religion.

At the same time, it should not be banned. It's a "thought crime" if it were to be banned. To be investigated,
they'd have to have someone who "knew" what you were thinking or could get into your head. That's
mind-reading, or another form of magic, and just what we are trying to forbid. It seriously interferes with
freedom of association - if someone wants to have a church or temple meeting, let them. It's even okay with
me if they don't include outsiders. What should be outlawed are actions. If someone is killing Jews because
they are Jews, and terrorists/activists working for a foreign government who is Muslim wants to run airplanes
into buildings, or if someone advocates burning witches, or stoning gays, or torturing Jews, or murdering
"feminists" who don't adhere to their religious teachings, those should be treated as other crimes of doing
the same thing. Holding a strange idea is not an excuse. It might indicate being mentally unfit to stand
trial or mentally unable to understand the consequences for their action.

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Yes, some "religions" are indistinguishable from mental illness. The more delusional the religion, the more
it deserves being classified along side "schizophrenia". At the same time, without there being "thought crime",
neither of those deserves being "locked up" for. It's behaviors that we need to protect ourselves from.

Well said. This pretty closely matches my opinion on the topic.