Book Burning

[thir]

It is fanatical a holes like them that give other people a bad name by proxy in the eyes of too many unfortunately. Both the book burners and the people rioting over it just make terrible examples of how religion can be abused by those who dont follow the very things they claim too.

And calling people stupid for having religion and such hypocritical stereotyping of all faiths for the actions of a few is just as bad a crime imho becuase all it does is add fuel to the fire of intolereance.

If you mean me, I did not call anyone 'stupid', I called them 'almost insane'. And so they were, and I think maybe all real cults are like that. 'Cults' as in isolating their members from the rest of society, and, as in this case, living in fear of Hell every waking moment of their life, as well as sprouting hate and obscene slogans at other people - all other people.

That does not spell normal to me.

As for "I can see why some people think that religion is a real danger and a curse" that should have been "dogmatic, institutionalized religion." I was too shaken to think straight but by all gods large and small, I stand by that!

On the same evening I (stupidly) saw the film The Magdalene Sisters. If you do not know it, it concerns the Irish laundries which were run by nuns, with the work done by 'fallen women', such young girls who had been raped, or was considered flirty, or had a child out of wed-lock, or who were otherwise on edge with their family or the local, catholic priest. They were in there for an indefinite time, some all their lives, working 10 hours a day, always scolded, treated with contempt, and without any human relationship to even each other, as they were never allowed to talk with each other which was enforced by any and all means.

Same thing happened in protestant UK and much of Europe, and the last of these launderies closed in Ireland in - guess - 1996!

Neither church has even apologized for this inhuman behaviour.

This is obviously one a small part of what dogmatic religion can bring - the kind that is either a tool for power, or is, in itself, a power.

No religion, no government, no political faction has the right to tell anyone what to think, or do.

As for fire of intolerance, that has always seemed to me to come from said dogmatic religions. Everybody else simply discuss, they do not try to make all other people abide by their ideas.