Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
Every side of every issue has engaged in censorship in one form or another, at some point or other in history. Using it as an argument has become something of a red herring.  |
Not really.
Reasonable liberal secular societies are not generally hostile to religion, unless threatened with violence. (Please don't bring up Utopian experiments, which by their nature were similar to religion, and like all religions, were in competition for "souls" (or "hearts and minds.))
But religion, and in particular its monotheistic strains, is hostile by its very nature to both non-believers and to the followers of other deities. The first couple of the Ten Commandments hammer the point clearly:
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
Do not have any other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me."
Throw in:
"You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles
(for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).
You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, ..."
And you get the picture. Religious intolerance and militancy is not a red herring at all, but at the very core of some of the currently most popular religions.