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Originally Posted by Hasbinbad
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ok so.
In my humble opinion: "people governing themselves without the overriding and overwhelming, pervasive and insidious nature of religion influencing every aspect of their lives" hasn't yet had it's day in court. We're still in the trasition phase. We've had possibly tens of thousands of years under the bondage of superstition, and the modern scientific movement to explain the nature of the universe in real terms is barely 100 years old, at the fullest extent of any rhetoric about what constitutes modern understanding. Religion still in fact holds sway in may places on earth. We haven't had a "shift away from state religion," but rather we are currently shifting. You claim that this shift hasn't diluted tyranny, but my friend, you're trying to dilute the ocean with a lake. It's going to take time.
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fair. my conception is different, but that's fair.
to me, religion is a replaceable red herring. most of the atrocities ascribed to religion were in fact driven by far more secular and cynical motivations. religion used to be a catch-all. it was nationalism, it was class warfare, it was racism, it was xenophobia, it was greed. in nazi germany, instead of killing for god, they killed for racial purity. 200, 500, 1500 years earlier, the same type of killings would've been primed in religious terms. stalin murdered anyone who opposed him. instead of religion, he did it in the name of the proletariat and the revolution. today, instead of screaming christ, we scream freedom or national security.
governments and people kill and oppress now for the same reasons they always have. religion is an easy rallying cry, but it's not a necessary one. if it's not religion, it's political ideology or racial purity or economic equity or nationalism