RE: Religion is poison to democracy
April 27, 2023 at 7:06 am
(This post was last modified: April 27, 2023 at 7:07 am by Fake Messiah.)
Religion should be removed from politics/ democracy or, more precisely, religiously motivated laws. But that does not mean that religious people should not be allowed to vote.
If we look at the creators of modern democracy, the founding fathers of the US, we can see that they were not necessarily atheists but they were wise enough to keep religion separate from the Constitution and the government. They did this because there were plenty of people living in the US with different religions and they knew that if they put one religion into the law all other religions would be unwelcomed and people would be persecuted because of their religion - which is exactly what was happening in Europe. So they created a country with unique freedoms for people to not only live but want to come and live in.
Now, of course, some Christian movements want to put Christian hegemony into the government which would be catastrophic not only for democracy but for people of other religions.
If we look at the creators of modern democracy, the founding fathers of the US, we can see that they were not necessarily atheists but they were wise enough to keep religion separate from the Constitution and the government. They did this because there were plenty of people living in the US with different religions and they knew that if they put one religion into the law all other religions would be unwelcomed and people would be persecuted because of their religion - which is exactly what was happening in Europe. So they created a country with unique freedoms for people to not only live but want to come and live in.
Now, of course, some Christian movements want to put Christian hegemony into the government which would be catastrophic not only for democracy but for people of other religions.
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"
