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Blasphemy law abolished
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handofdave
handofdave
3515 posts

Edited Mar 09, 2008, 17:14
Re: Blasphemy law abolished
Mar 09, 2008, 17:10
Oh dear...

I'm feeling a little bit alarmed hearing this. I'm not religious myself, and there's plenty of religious thought/action that I find repulsive.

But the vein of this idea, that religious freedoms ought to be curtailed, is a straight road to a sort of secular empiricism.

As I've pointed out in the past, the abolishing of religion doesn't solve much. The Soviet Union and China tried it, and both cultures weren't made better for it.. they devolved into big brother states.

I suppose I ought to be defending your argument, as in the USA the religious aspects of culture are far more insidious than in the UK. But creating a secular culture that marginalizes religion by force makes me nervous. It reeks of substituting monotheism with monosecularism.

There's plenty of human beings on this planet and lots of room for different perspectives on the 'divine'. In a purely biological sense diversity is a good thing, and culturally it ought to follow that avoiding monolithic, top-down social belief systems, even secular ones, is better in the long run than trying to ram a single cultural meme down everyone's throat.

Sorry, Jane, I'm with you in some regards but ultimately I can't agree with the idea that the state has any business telling religious people that they are less equal. A slippery slope that can lead to the most vile forms of persecution, as was seen in the large Communist states, and is STILL seen in China (they jail and torture the Falong Gong to this day). Would western society sink to such methods? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not willing to find out.

Am I for the strict separation of Church and State? You bet.
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