Religions Behaving Badly

[Thorne]

I'm starting this thread to continue an off-topic discussion from the thread on Hell. As noted by denuseri, this really didn't belong there.

I will do my best to refrain from personal attacks on other posters, and I would urge others to do the same. We are all adults discussing an important and controversial topic. So let's keep it civil, shall we?

To recap a little,

While the leaders of the communist movement may have been atheist, such atheism had little or nothing to do with their actions. Their whole purpose was to control the very minds of their subjects. To do this they had to remove any other controlling forces, such as religion. It was greed and the lust for power that drove those men, not atheism. And not science. The only use the communists had for science was in trying to keep up with western advances in armaments.

Can we say the same of those killed for the sake of religions?

An interesting list here, too.

So if you kill by way of religious intolerance, it is worse that to kill for lust for power?
The dead are just as dead.

The big difference to my mind is that religious leaders tend to proclaim their adherence to the tenets of goodness and justice and righteousness. In reality, they practice immorality, injustice and bigotry.

How many priest have to commit sexual crimes against children, how many preachers have to have adulterous affairs, how many mullahs have to call for the murder of authors before people realize that their religious leaders are "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrites?

How many abortion workers have to be killed before people will learn that "Thou shalt not kill" also means "Thou shalt not kill those who believe differently from you"?

How many children must grow up educationally handicapped before people finally say, "No, the Bible is NOT science and has no place in the science classroom"?

And all of this (and so much more) because of an imaginary being who has no more reality than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.