Being forced to believe anything on pain of death is just wrong. Russia during the Soviet Union and China during Mao Tse Tung both tried to stamp out all religion and instead to make the State itself the religion. However, this just brought about brainwashed people and very corrupt governments with no human rights at all and devastated ecologies in Russia and China.
So, as a westerner, freedom of religion (even if it is something you make up for today as a set of principles to live by just for you) is an important thing across the globe. Protecting freedom of religion is protecting the sanity of the billions.
It's not that organized religion doesn't drive many many people insane because it does that too.
However, religions tend to be civilizing factors for all cultures and all countries. If you look at history no culture, no city, no civilization would exist at all without the pacifying nature of religions to help people move towards similar values and mores in that area of the world.
Even here in the U.S. basically we have been a Christian nation since the 1600s at Plymouth Rock with the Pilgrims. We are now the largest group of Christians within any single nation on earth at I believe around 250 million self described Christians of thousands to millions of different sects and concepts regarding their Christianity. But, Freedom of Religion is one of the things that has made the United States Great.
We don't just behead or execute people for having a different religion like ISIL (the Islamic State) does. Though we have had ethnic and racial issues, freedom of religion has been generally a sacred bond between the government and the People of the U.S.
No comments:
Post a Comment