Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

All conflict between groups of people are political, even religious conflict - religion is politics.  Always has been.

It remains a fact that protestants attempted to disenfranchise catholics.  This was useful for unionists in their attempt to minimize seperatists...but it doesn't explain why the civil service was a dead end for catholics....and it doesn't explain why Tommy on the street threw a bomb into a gaggle of catholic kids.   Both are examples of violence.

When a group of people who demonstrably do want to join in and participate in government are excluded, and very plainly on the basis of their religious beliefs, religion is involved.  When some thick headed zealot torches kids, who have no political persuasions, targeting them very plainly on the basis of their (or their parents) religion, religion is involved.

That there are "atheist catholics" - and protestants..is a matter of fact.  Just ask the bishops and pastors of their respective faiths, who complain to no end about exactly that.  You don't have to believe in god to believe in a religion.  They show up every week and take the positions on (gasp) political issues that they're supposed to take....but they don't really believe.  Standard cultural hegemony.  If and when that religion becomes a cudgel..even though you(they) don't believe in gods, you(they) will still..very likely, swing it.   So...I suppose, if you prefer to see this as a case of savvy politicians manipulating people with the usual god and country song and dance..then fine.  Those people were manipulable, by that specific lever.

Civil service applicants and schoolchildren weren't seperatists, but they were catholic enough to be killed like one.
Working class plebs and their children weren't unionists, but they were protestant enough to be killed like one.

The animus between protestants and catholics has never gone away and it never will.  Not there and then or here and now.  They sometimes decide to stop skullfucking each other for a couple generations to consolidate their shared political power, a span of time which only seems long to us on account of how human beings have much shorter lifespans than a church - but that's as chummy as two directly opposed faiths with their attendant claims to authority can ever be.  Theism is a fucking plague on humanity.

I've been denied employment, housing, and had property vandalized for no other reason than I have a Catholic-sounding surname.  It was EXACTLY that sort of treatment that (briefly) radicalized me and sent me into the streets. I've honestly never given as much as two shits about a united Ireland, one way or the other. For me, and for a LOT of people I know, the discrimination and violence (sometimes fatal) was religion-based, the political aspect was either non-existent or peripheral.

Boru