By Carl S ~
After many years of contributing to charities, I realized most of them help, defend, and end the creation of even more victims. Indeed, these goals explain my writings. Everyone who comments on “Ex” is a victim of religion, even those who protest. Ranting trolls are victims still defending the beliefs that keep them in bondage. Their parroting of threats and promises results from religious indoctrination.
I contribute to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Planned Parenthood, for examples. Also, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Every one of them is involved with human rights, and each one concerns religious violations of those rights. The Center For Inquiry promotes reason, the scientific method, and humanism against religious superstition, the perpetuation of lies, and fear. I frequently cite scientific evidence to refute the claims of Christians. Science is not only “the method we use to keep from fooling ourselves,” it is the method we use to free ourselves from fears. This is most necessary in these times of a nation gone amok in fears, ignorance, and misinformation.
Every issue of the “Freethought Today” newspaper carries a section of “Black Collar crimes,” reports from all over the world, of clergy abuses. Why aren't we hearing about “victims of religion” from other sources? Well, it's because religious entities have always done a powerful propaganda job of covering up that issue while they promote themselves as bastions of goodness and charity.
Yes, you can go to Charity Navigator and find religious charities listed in its top ten best. But, doesn't the good they do entail the bad? Religions create victims: Aren't children victims of religion whenever they're told evolutionary evidence is wrong, that climate change is bunk, that they will go to eternal torment if they don't believe what their priests, pastors, clergy, and parents, tell them? (Wow. They really do gang up on individual kids, don't they?)
Religions need victims. They all have martyrs.When we read of pedophiles, how many of them are clergy? Let's set aside the actions of dictator Assad, for a moment. Consider: worldwide terrorist acts, sectarian wars, and the erosion and destruction of human rights: they're all driven by religious zeal from Islamics and Christians alike. The American Constitution itself is attacked by the Christian righteous. When freedoms have eroded away because of their militancy, we will all be victims.
Religions need victims. They all have martyrs. Abrahamic religions are based on the fable of a lying man who hears a voice telling him to slay his son, which he obeys. Thus, he becomes not only a victim to his delusion, but attempts to kill his child. Think about the Christian myth of the victim god-man, Jesus. He was a masochist who went to a horrible death, when all he had to do was say ”no.” Clergy encouraged his followers to “do likewise.” Another Christian dogma: the belief in a father who won't take personal responsibility for murdering his son. Instead, he has other people do it for him, and then he blames the killing on the Jewish people, who then become victims of Christian persecutions! Like their god, religions refuse to take responsibility for the harm they caused and are causing. And the word “Islam” means “submission,” which sets the believer up for victimhood. Each religion, with its sects, has made victims of those millions not in agreement with them.
Persecution isn't necessary to create victims. Those who attend seminaries are often told the truth about their religious beliefs, but are told they must go forth to teach and support doctrines which preach the opposite of what they've been taught! They have to pretend what they say is true. To minister, they must knowingly lie to their flocks. So, it's not just the lied-to who are victims, but the liars themselves, willingly or not.
And underlying all the above, is the doctrine of forgiveness. Whatever wrongs the religious do or say will be divinely forgiven. However, there is no religiously compelling compensation for the victims of religions. Why would there be? Their ends justify their means. Any justice has to be hoped for from secular laws and courts; there will be none where religion and state are married to each other. Meanwhile, psychological damage is denied by religions as nonexistent.
I see injustice, lying, and ignorance threatening to trump evidence and love of clear thinking. We see all the progress for human and equal rights made over the centuries, in danger of being trampled by prejudice, fear, and hate. We are overcome, and have been in mourning. We are in danger of retaliating by being irritable to one another. We must eventually become angry, or else we will allow ourselves to become victims. We must be angry because we care. More so, we must not only free the victims, but help them free others. And if I'm unable to do this myself by constant appeals to reason and through shredding irrational fears, I'm sure as hell going to keep on supporting those who can. So shall we all. Come join the Special Victims Unit.
I contribute to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Planned Parenthood, for examples. Also, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Every one of them is involved with human rights, and each one concerns religious violations of those rights. The Center For Inquiry promotes reason, the scientific method, and humanism against religious superstition, the perpetuation of lies, and fear. I frequently cite scientific evidence to refute the claims of Christians. Science is not only “the method we use to keep from fooling ourselves,” it is the method we use to free ourselves from fears. This is most necessary in these times of a nation gone amok in fears, ignorance, and misinformation.
Every issue of the “Freethought Today” newspaper carries a section of “Black Collar crimes,” reports from all over the world, of clergy abuses. Why aren't we hearing about “victims of religion” from other sources? Well, it's because religious entities have always done a powerful propaganda job of covering up that issue while they promote themselves as bastions of goodness and charity.
Yes, you can go to Charity Navigator and find religious charities listed in its top ten best. But, doesn't the good they do entail the bad? Religions create victims: Aren't children victims of religion whenever they're told evolutionary evidence is wrong, that climate change is bunk, that they will go to eternal torment if they don't believe what their priests, pastors, clergy, and parents, tell them? (Wow. They really do gang up on individual kids, don't they?)
Religions need victims. They all have martyrs.When we read of pedophiles, how many of them are clergy? Let's set aside the actions of dictator Assad, for a moment. Consider: worldwide terrorist acts, sectarian wars, and the erosion and destruction of human rights: they're all driven by religious zeal from Islamics and Christians alike. The American Constitution itself is attacked by the Christian righteous. When freedoms have eroded away because of their militancy, we will all be victims.
Religions need victims. They all have martyrs. Abrahamic religions are based on the fable of a lying man who hears a voice telling him to slay his son, which he obeys. Thus, he becomes not only a victim to his delusion, but attempts to kill his child. Think about the Christian myth of the victim god-man, Jesus. He was a masochist who went to a horrible death, when all he had to do was say ”no.” Clergy encouraged his followers to “do likewise.” Another Christian dogma: the belief in a father who won't take personal responsibility for murdering his son. Instead, he has other people do it for him, and then he blames the killing on the Jewish people, who then become victims of Christian persecutions! Like their god, religions refuse to take responsibility for the harm they caused and are causing. And the word “Islam” means “submission,” which sets the believer up for victimhood. Each religion, with its sects, has made victims of those millions not in agreement with them.
Persecution isn't necessary to create victims. Those who attend seminaries are often told the truth about their religious beliefs, but are told they must go forth to teach and support doctrines which preach the opposite of what they've been taught! They have to pretend what they say is true. To minister, they must knowingly lie to their flocks. So, it's not just the lied-to who are victims, but the liars themselves, willingly or not.
And underlying all the above, is the doctrine of forgiveness. Whatever wrongs the religious do or say will be divinely forgiven. However, there is no religiously compelling compensation for the victims of religions. Why would there be? Their ends justify their means. Any justice has to be hoped for from secular laws and courts; there will be none where religion and state are married to each other. Meanwhile, psychological damage is denied by religions as nonexistent.
I see injustice, lying, and ignorance threatening to trump evidence and love of clear thinking. We see all the progress for human and equal rights made over the centuries, in danger of being trampled by prejudice, fear, and hate. We are overcome, and have been in mourning. We are in danger of retaliating by being irritable to one another. We must eventually become angry, or else we will allow ourselves to become victims. We must be angry because we care. More so, we must not only free the victims, but help them free others. And if I'm unable to do this myself by constant appeals to reason and through shredding irrational fears, I'm sure as hell going to keep on supporting those who can. So shall we all. Come join the Special Victims Unit.
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