Ceding no ground to religion

 


When I first gave up on religion, and religious people would try to convince me that religion was actually a good thing if it was done right, I would often make concessions. I would concede that GOOD religion would make people more moral, it was just when people twisted it for evil purposes that it would accomplish evil. I would concede that religion had SOME true things to say, it was just often bogged down in the untrue things that religious people also had to say.


But I'm no longer conceding any ground at all to religion. Because none of the ground that religion claims to stand on is legitimately religion's ground, nor has it ever been.


Religion claims to stand on truth, but actually stands on lies.


Religion claims to stand on moral superiority, but actually stands on superior power.


Religion claims to stand on universal love and brotherhood, but actually stands on hate, division, and the exploitation of the weak by the strong.


Religion claims to stand on faith and hope, but actually stands on despair - despair that this world can ever be any better, and pretending that things will get better after we're dead.

(I mean, things WILL get better after we're dead. Just... not for us. But for the new generations of humans who benefit from the things that this generation learns: yes. Things will be better than they now are. IF they use what they learn from people pursuing the truth, instead of letting lies like religion take the wheel.)


Religion is nothing, standing on nothing, and has no right to take up space that by rights belongs to REAL things.


I concede no ground to religion for the same reasons that Ukraine concedes no ground to Russia. The ground was never legitimately theirs. Any claim they ever had rested on who had the most power rather than on who was right. But most of all, because I remember what it was like to be under the tyrant's heel; and having tasted freedom I will NOT concede an inch to tyranny.


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