For a long time, science and religion have been frenemies: they hate each other, they love each other, they love to hate each other. It's like the Hatfield's and the McCoy's practically.
To some atheists, religion might be the most evil thing in the world, responsible for genocide, war, torture and a whole lot of other horrors. To some theists, on the other hand, atheism and science are responsible for far , far more evil. But the truth is that this conflict between science and religion, while real in may ways, is not as legitimate as it seems.
You see, the problem with both science and religion, is that they are often used together. Even the Nazi Holocaust could never have been accomplished without a heavy reliance on the use of religion to convince the 99% Christian population of Germany at the time, that discriminating against the Jews was a Christian thing to do.
But for all of the barbs that have been traded back and forth between science and religion, about which is worse or which has more blood on it's hands, the problem with BOTH of them is exactly the same. BOTH become equally tyrannical when either one is treated as an absolute unquestionable truth.
When neither science nor religion can be questioned, both become as despotic as religion has always been, and remains today. ISIS, for example, is not an anomaly to religion, but is its most fervent expression. And no one is allowed to question it. That's the purpose of blasphemy laws.
For religion, blasphemy laws have always been used to protect an idea that cannot protect itself in the arena of reason and rational debate. They are the means by which religion cloaks the wolf of it's terrorism in the moral sheep skin of law. It is how people plug up the truck size holes in their argument by filling it with the threat of torture, execution, imprisonment, excommunication, or even hell.
So much for religion being the champion of free speech, or free thought, or even being willing to get in the ring of reasoning without having to protect the absurdity of its lies by insisting that people cannot say certain things about it's "absolute truths." That's like Darwin saying, "Yes, we are free to discuss and debate the "truths" of my theory of natural selection. But if you ask certain questions or blaspheme me or my personal "truths" regarding this theory, I will murder you."
No wonder so many people are waking up to just how full of lies religion claims to be, whenever it talks about being the repository of "absolute truth."
To some atheists, religion might be the most evil thing in the world, responsible for genocide, war, torture and a whole lot of other horrors. To some theists, on the other hand, atheism and science are responsible for far , far more evil. But the truth is that this conflict between science and religion, while real in may ways, is not as legitimate as it seems.
You see, the problem with both science and religion, is that they are often used together. Even the Nazi Holocaust could never have been accomplished without a heavy reliance on the use of religion to convince the 99% Christian population of Germany at the time, that discriminating against the Jews was a Christian thing to do.
But for all of the barbs that have been traded back and forth between science and religion, about which is worse or which has more blood on it's hands, the problem with BOTH of them is exactly the same. BOTH become equally tyrannical when either one is treated as an absolute unquestionable truth.
When neither science nor religion can be questioned, both become as despotic as religion has always been, and remains today. ISIS, for example, is not an anomaly to religion, but is its most fervent expression. And no one is allowed to question it. That's the purpose of blasphemy laws.
For religion, blasphemy laws have always been used to protect an idea that cannot protect itself in the arena of reason and rational debate. They are the means by which religion cloaks the wolf of it's terrorism in the moral sheep skin of law. It is how people plug up the truck size holes in their argument by filling it with the threat of torture, execution, imprisonment, excommunication, or even hell.
So much for religion being the champion of free speech, or free thought, or even being willing to get in the ring of reasoning without having to protect the absurdity of its lies by insisting that people cannot say certain things about it's "absolute truths." That's like Darwin saying, "Yes, we are free to discuss and debate the "truths" of my theory of natural selection. But if you ask certain questions or blaspheme me or my personal "truths" regarding this theory, I will murder you."
No wonder so many people are waking up to just how full of lies religion claims to be, whenever it talks about being the repository of "absolute truth."
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