RE: How many of you would punish religious people for being religious?
April 17, 2022 at 3:28 am
As it is also a time of the Passover, there is a new article in New York Times written by a Jewish guy where he explains how he was mentally abused by the religious class
Here are few examples from the article titled "In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God"
And children generally do get abused by religion by people teaching them archaic worldviews from which societies are trying to move away (like blaming women for world's problems). But it is accepted child abuse. And even if the atheist President came to power with both atheist Congress and Senate would not forbid parents to teach their kids nonsense because they would obey the Democratic and humanistic principles where parents do have great authority over their children. Not to mention that there is a constitution that protects these things.
Changes in democracy come from group discussions and there is no reason that an atheist government would circumvent that.
Here are few examples from the article titled "In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God"
Quote:“And so God killed them all,” the rabbis and priests and imams can preach to their classrooms. “That was wrong, children.”
“God threw Adam out of Eden for eating an apple,” they can caution their students. “That’s called being heavy-handed, children.”
Cursing all women for eternity because of Eve’s choices?
“That’s called collective punishment, children,” they can warn the young. “Don’t do that.”
...
Two aspects of the Passover story have troubled me since I was first taught them long ago in an Orthodox yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y. I was 8 years old, and as the holiday approached, our rabbi commanded us to open our chumashim, or Old Testaments, to the Book of Exodus. To get us in the holiday spirit, he told us gruesome tales of torture and persecution.
“The Egyptians,” he told us, “used the corpses of Jewish slaves in their buildings.”
“You mean they used slaves to build their buildings,” I asked, “and the slaves died from work?”
“No,” said the rabbi. “They put the Jewish bodies into the walls and used them as bricks.”
....
“Every firstborn son in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on the throne to the firstborn of the servant girl.” Exodus 11:5.
Surely, I wondered, there were some Egyptians who didn’t whip Jews, who didn’t have anything against Jews at all? Surely there were Egyptians horrified by slavery, Egyptians who disagreed with Pharaoh as often as we do with our own leaders?
...
“Why did God kill the first-born cattle?” my rabbi said. “Because the Egyptians believed they were gods.”
Killing gods is an idea I can get behind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/opini...p-god.html
And children generally do get abused by religion by people teaching them archaic worldviews from which societies are trying to move away (like blaming women for world's problems). But it is accepted child abuse. And even if the atheist President came to power with both atheist Congress and Senate would not forbid parents to teach their kids nonsense because they would obey the Democratic and humanistic principles where parents do have great authority over their children. Not to mention that there is a constitution that protects these things.
Changes in democracy come from group discussions and there is no reason that an atheist government would circumvent that.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
