RE: Is religion a necessary evil?
October 31, 2018 at 4:22 pm
(This post was last modified: October 31, 2018 at 4:27 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(October 31, 2018 at 3:12 pm)Dr H Wrote: That seems like stacking the deck, to me. From the OP, the question at issue is "Is religion a necessary evil?", and not "is the most intolerable religion you can imagine necessary?"The point being conveyed is that necessity might not make something more tolerable - which cuts directly at the OP Q. The hypothetical example only presents a clear case of that point. Do you disagree with that point? That no amount of some intolerable religion being necessary to a person will make the religion more or less tolerable? No more so than the necessity of crime to some person makes crime more or less tolerable?
Now, I'm speaking for myself here, not anom..but I don't think that religion -is- a necessary evil. Even, when we say, "but this person might really need the religion"..to me at least, we seem to be referring to a package of tangibles offered by that religion, not the religion itself. Those tangibles never seem to be exclusive to religion. So, while anom might note that something being necessary won't make it tolerable..I don't think it's necessary in the first place..but I do think it's evil... making it even more intolerable.
You're already living in a world that doesn't tolerate the silly, childish, misspent energy and waste of time and resources of all but three or four religions (three of them being different products in the same brand line)..and a world in which those remaining few exemptions are severely limited and stripped of crucial deference in developed countries. No one would tolerate a human sacrifice. No amount of gnashing of teeth and nervous breakdowns on the part of the believer would change our minds about that. Magic book says we should kill the gays - we no longer tolerate that.
You are only tolerant of the husk of religion that your ideological predecessors left in their wake as they castrated them one by one and sent the remainder to live on the reservation. Even the religious know that. That's why those weirdos are so pissy all the time.
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