Religious Persecution is alive and well.
Where?
Why virtually anywhere you care to name, including this great bastion of democracy that took the brave steps of entrenching protections against religious persecution into its constitution, namely the USA.
The thing most people don’t consider about religious persecution is that it is the religious who are doing the persecuting as much as it is the religious who are being persecuted. Sure, they often persecute believers of religions who dare differ from theirs, but they also persecute people who dare to abandon theirs, to switch to religions other than theirs, and even those people who have never ascribed to any religion at all.
The religious are the persecutors.
That is an undeniable fact.
The religious are the persecutors. Though they may sometimes be the persecuted, they are always the persecutors.
Yes, there are radical atheists who vocally proclaim their lack of religious belief. However I have yet to see a bunch of atheists inciting others to mass murder. Not now, in our present time, or ever in the annals of history. Not even in the history of the USSR, which promulgated some of the toughest reforms against organized religions.
Do you think I’m referring to the current persecution of Christians by Islamics?
Think again.
Think back in history and recount the crimes against humanity committed by Christians. What a sordid series of atrocities virtually without end. How many hundreds of millions has Christianity murdered and tortured during its course? How many thousands of precious and unique cultures has Christianity not only destroyed, but utterly obliterated from written history?
What Christianity has done to humanity must surely count as some of the worst examples of religious persecution.
And now think back into the present and recount the crimes against humanity currently being committed by Islamics. I am certain you don’t need my guidance to find the appalling evidence of Islam’s excess.
What Islam is doing and has done to humanity must surely count as some of the worst examples of religious persecution.
Yet religion remains at the root of countless other less obnoxious persecutions against individual freedom and liberty. In the USA same-sex marriage has just been declared constitutional. What has the holdup been in allowing loving couples to love each other openly and with the full and equal protection of the law? That holdup would be religion.
Does religious persecution still exist? Undeniably. However its perpetrators remain the same as they have since our most ancient of histories – other religions.
Lest you think I exaggerate try standing up in public view anywhere in the USA, where Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion are constitutional guarantees, and say “I am no longer a Christian.” I wonder who will persecute you for such a pronouncement?
I don’t really wonder at all… Do you?
{PS. So what do I believe? Am I religious, or am I not? I don’t know the answer to that with any certainty, however I do know I don’t subscribe to belief in any singular all-powerful deity. But if you’re interested in what I believe you may find some of the answers here.}