Ban Religion - are you for or against it and why?

[reverendjeremiah]

Disagree. Religion is not voluntary for many, as, when it is inculcated in early childhood, before a grounds for judgment or skepticism may be formed, it is involuntary. To say otherwise would be to legitimize child abuse with the "He asked for it" rationalization.

Good point also..religion is typically forced upon children, and engrained into their psyche.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a very sinister psychological con. It's often not voluntary. Those who leave still deal with the baggage that it brought in the first place. Can you sell yourself into slavery in this country? No, you cannot. So voluntary slavery doesn't cut it.

[Epimethean]

Having just finished watching the first season of The Walking Dead, that's sort of how I view it: Contagion.

[reverendjeremiah]

Im more on the "delusion" side myself

[Epimethean]

Mindlessness that can kill ... similar.

[ElDinero]

So Rhythm, you basically want to ban certain aspects of existing religions (the bits which should probably be illegal anyway). That's not the same as saying we should outright ban religion. A religion could exist in theory that didn't trespass on the liberties of others. You can't point at the bad bits of say, Islam, and use that as a reason to ban all religion. You could apply this logic elsewhere and end up banning all sorts of shit.

I agree with all the negative points you raise about religion (obviously, and believe me I don't intend to spend much time fighting their corner), but that doesn't mean you have, or should have, the right to remove it. People are free to do and say whatever they like. The only thing we should be combating is actions that infringe on the freedoms of others, which religion doesn't NECESSARILY do.

[Epimethean]

But which it often does as a net effect.

[thesummerqueen]

It would seem to me that even if we ban slavery, we don't change the fact that there are people out there who still believe in their ethnic or racial superiority. So banning the outward manifestation of a belief, while the correct thing to do, hasn't solved the root of the problem.

What HAS begun to solve it is experience and integration. There were people who already knew blacks were humans exactly the same as they were from the very beginning. Or they might have simply thought slavery was wrong no matter if blacks were just as intelligent or not, etc. But after a certain amount of time between science showing that on a molecular level skin-tone doesn't mean jack-shit, and the experience of having to rub elbows with this "inferior" race eventually demonstrated that there is no real difference.

If you start banning ways of thinking, you merely make criminals out of anyone who doesn't maintain the lawmaker's status quo - not a principle this country was built on, Rhythm. And you go and say "I declare you can no longer think this or that," and who is to say that you're right or wrong about it? I know this is heading in slippery slope territory, but when you say "religion is banned" what comes next?

Ban people, as we have, from murdering each other. They can give whatever reason they want - religious, or not - but murder is still murder. Keep them from trying to teach religion in schools, which this country has been fighting about but is slowly waking up to. Concentrate on "integrating" atheists into society so they see we're not the devil. Promote science and information so it breaks down their belief in bullshit.

There are some people who NEED the structure that religion provides, and the belief in whatever particular god is only a mask for that need. If it wasn't some douchebag, jealous, whining god like Yahweh, it would be Xenu, or the religious-like fervor people have for their political party, or PETA. They need the sense of belonging and a direction because they either aren't capable of forming it, or weren't raised to be capable. A group doesn't have to be a religion in order to have misguided ideals and act in utterly depraved ways. If you deny these people their ability to form such a group, they will do it anyway or it will manifest in some other form. But you can deny them the right to harm anyone, regardless of what they promote internally, and much as we see today that bullshit is slipping away.

I really don't think there would be such an outcry out of the Religious Right if they didn't realize that the scales were tipping out of their favor.

[ElDinero]

But which it often does as a net effect.

Yes...so it's those aspects that we should seek to eliminate. You can't tell people they can't have a religion any more than you can tell them they aren't allowed to follow a particular sports team.

If I said I belonged to a religion that worshipped a goat, spent every Tuesday and Friday lying face down on the floor and which had a core message of 'give money to the less fortunate when you can and treat everybody with kindness', on what basis would you seek to ban my religion?

As with sexual preference, political leaning and any number of other things, it's nobody else's business if you follow a religion or not. As I've stated, the only things we should be looking to stop are when religions try to influence other areas of society as a result of their beliefs. Yes, this commonly happens with the religions we know of, but it is not an essential product of religion.

[Epimethean]

" ... to influence other areas of society ... is not an essential product of religion."

History does not corroborate this, ElD. How would you seek to keep it from occurring again without sanctions which would then take massive resources in court as processes of appeals waged war with law?