Freedom of Religion

[Abracadabra]

if we would all be atheists we would all be friends

That's pretty naive right there.

Clearly John Lennon thought that might be the case too when he wrote Imagine.

I'll be the first to agree that religions can indeed be the source of animosity and ignorance. But to think that religions are the only philosophies that are vulnerable to such stupidity is truly naive.

Just because a person doesn't believe in a God or a spiritual existence doesn't mean that they are automatically going to be a nice person. On the contrary there are a lot of really nasty sick demented people out there who probably don't believe in God or spirituality (i.e. they are atheists too!)

Finally, there actually exist people who do believe in Gods and spirituality and are indeed very nice people who wouldn't harm anyone intentionally.

In fact, you can be very grateful that this is indeed the truth of reality with regard to most religious people.

The truth is that the vast majority of religious people are nice.

And you should be very thankful for that.

In fact, religious beliefs keep some of them nice! There are people who currently believe in religion and restrain their behavior because of their belief. If you force them to stop believing they can actually have a psychological nervous breakdown and become extremely dangerous criminals.

Surely you've heard a religious person say, "If I didn't believe in God there would be no reason to just kill whoever I didn't like and to steal or take advantage of anyone at ever chance.

I mean seriously. You may not realize it, but religious beliefs might actually be keeping far more people from becoming horrifically violent criminals.

That's no reason to support religions, but I'm just saying. Religion does curb some people who could potentially otherwise become quite nasty.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that it probably curbs far more people than it incites into the type of violence that you blame religions for.

I'm all for people believing in "Gods" and Spirituality in a positive way. But in the case of the Abrahamic religoins where the God is portrayed as being a jealous God who hates everyone who doesn't believe in a particular religion is actually a quite negative thing right there.

So I'll be the first to agree that we need to move away from these "Jealous God" religions.

But we shouldn't renounce spiritual beliefs altogether. Trying to force people to become atheists is just as stupid as trying to force them to believe that Jesus supports the ignorance and bigotries associated with the God of Abraham.