RELIGION AND ITS ALLIES HAVE A DISMISSIVE DISGUSTING TAKE ON RELIGION'S PAST ATROCITIES
By past atrocities, we include ones that have just finished!
If you point out to the many past and current atrocities done by religion and people who it regarded it as members (and won’t even expel) you will be told this is what happens when the government and religion get too connected. Don’t buy that. It is an excuse. If religion has the power to transform or at least keep bad people from being worse it should woo the government. It is incoherent to say that God's love always wins so that even bad religion can be used by him and to say that religion and politics are a bad mix.
What of this, "Despite appearances the government spiritually benefits from religion." That is just rationalisation. Nobody has the right to talk about the harm and suffering in that way without PROVING IT. Some things need hard proof. Respect for suffering people you have never met, the depths of whose suffering you will never understand or imagine, demands it.
Do not be conned by people who say their religion is good despite the evil it did as a religion in the past. The past is part of the picture and shows to what extent a religion fails to influence people to be good. It is relevant today for not learning from the past means you are doomed to let it repeat itself. And there is nothing really new under the sun anyway.
The religion needs to be looked at as a whole, past and present and possible future, when you are faced with the question, "Should this system of faith, this religion have been founded and supported?" A religion that has done more harm in the past even if it is civil now is one that should never have existed. The religion's violent history is a lesson about what it could be like now if it got the chance. It is proof that there is an inherent problem. The problem could be that that type of religion is not really about religion but is about power despite the holy facade. The problem could be that the religion is too ridiculous to connect to people's hearts despite their outward observance. A ridiculous religion is to blame for the dreadful consequences when people need guidance and truth and not rubbish. A dark history is a symptom not the illness.
We must remember that the violent history of a religion is the only real test of its capacity for violence and its paving the way for violent urges to emerge. To talk about the good people in the religion or its good side faith or its good founder and its non-violent scriptures is side-stepping the issue. The good is often the enemy of the best. Side-stepping the issue in such a serious matter is itself reprehensible and shows the person lacks tolerance and empathy. People who want to do evil by enabling others to do it are more common than those who are honest enough to do the evil themselves. They are far more to blame than the perpetrators.
When you point to the terrible hatreds and wars that religion started up years
ago, people say, "That is what went on in those times". In other words, its
excusable considering people didn't know any better then or they were trapped in
a culture that made them do bad things. In fact there are exceptions to every
rule. Not all areas would have been that ignorant and restrictive. And somebody
sometime has to break the mould. There is no excuse. Religion likes to make
excuses for its past bad behaviour and there is rarely a heartfelt apology and
amend-making for what it has done.
There is too much evil done by the Church in its history
so that its continued existence is simply reprehensible and unjustifiable. The
Church says God is our Father and all members of the Church are his adopted
children. So the Church speaks of them being a family. But one would need to be
insane to imagine the Church has the slightest chance of building a global
family ... the Church's existence is a failure.
It is vulgar to join and promote and minister for a
religion that has been bad and corrupt for centuries and to justify your support
by saying, "Look how it has changed". It's past hurt people and for that reason
still matters. You are not much of a person if you care that little.
The religion is still dangerous today when it has been bad for so long. The bad has been consistent until recently - it is not blips we are talking about. Its record shows that there are bad seeds in it and if they are dormant they are still there. If you were really that disgusted by what the religion has done you would not be so keen on it. That makes you a seed doesn't it?
