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Blasphemy law abolished
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Littlestone
Littlestone
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Re: Blasphemy law abolished
Mar 10, 2008, 15:02
The vast majority of the planet claims religious affiliation to one faith or another. Are we saying that most people on the planet are wrongheaded? (I grant you it's possible).


I wouldn't go as far as saying most people on the planet are wrongheaded (religions have served a purpose) but what I would say is that when you look at the countless religions that have fallen away over the last few thousand years you're forced to ask yourself why that should be. Didn't the gods and goddesses of those religions live up to expectations or was it just society creating them in their own image and, as society changed, so did its deities. Were people wrongheaded to follow those lost religions or was it that they simply had no choice - they could not disbelieve.

Less than a hundred years ago for example two Far Eastern countries, with populations of millions, believed in the divine origin of their emperors. In less than a 100 years that belief system has been swept away! Four or five hundred years ago the peoples of South America had pantheons on which great civilizations and wonderful cultures were built - where are they now? And further back in time, and in other parts of the world, the same was equally true. The religions of the Near and Middle East, those of ancient Greece and Rome, the Celtic and Germanic worlds, the varied indigenous religions of Africa, India, Tibet and South-East Asia - where are those religions now? All gone. What we are left with are four religions (actually only two major religions as the three monotheistic religions worship the same deity). Only Hinduism is fundamentally different and Buddhism is not a religion (but if we're going to get going on that one we better start a new thread :-)

You're quite right to say that the vast majority of the planet claims (and has claimed) religious affiliation to one faith or another but where are those multitude of faiths now? Should that not be a lesson to us, that religious belief really is rather transient - something that has helped get us to where we are but which has, to all intents, now served its purpose.
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