Religion and Spirituality

Religion was, for a long while, the only acceptable thing to say that you believed in, that has no scientific evidence whatsoever to back it up. It can be useful for providing a moral framework around which you live your life but when these beliefs cause the freedoms of others to be impinged upon, they should be given the short shrift they deserve.

I was appalled recently by comments made by some MP's, during the assisted suicide debate, that their opposition to the motion to allow assisted suicide came purely from their religious beliefs. I find the idea that a person suffering, who wishes to end that suffering, should be forced to live with it until their natural demise, so as not to anger a God they don't believe in, utterly repugnant. Anyone who is willing to allow their beliefs in fairy tales and gods for whom we have no evidence, to dictate their decisions in such important matters, should be nowhere near any real authority.

I have no problem with people believing what they want, going to church, mosque, synagogue etc (I myself love visiting churches, outside of the hours of mass) and using religion as a moral framework, but anything to do with religion should be a million miles away from any form of government.

McFrost said:

anything to do with religion should be a million miles away from any form of government.

Just as an aside, I wanted to share an experience I had with a place I worked in over the course of 15 years.

I used to visit Bali (Indonesia) a couple of times a year as my wife had a factory there who made leather goods for her fashion collection (she was a designer)  and I would oversee the quality control and shipping of the goods.

In Bali there was traditionally an animist religion - that is they believed in spirits of the forest / sea etc and not in deities in the way we in the west tend to.

The rest of Indonesia is primarily muslim and they have quite an aggressive / controlling approach to the population and over the time I worked in the island of Bali I noticed a steady influx of politicians from the mainland who would get into power through corruption and once they had majority control would start changing the laws for the population who were not muslim themselves, bringing it into line with the muslim beliefs.

There was a lot of co-ercive behavior from the authorities over that time to make the locals become muslim themselves - starting with bribes (cigarettes and booze to start with), peer pressure then more authoritarian means (losing your job for example) to make the locals convert.

The factory workers would talk about this and it was really sad to see how they were being manipulated, and the factory owner used to get visits from the local heavies from the council complete with machine gun carrying police to make sure they were doing their bit.

This is just another example of religion stamping its will on the locals - Christianity has done plenty of this around the world too.

That's really interesting. The problems with religion almost always seem to arise when things are imposed on others and freedom is curtailed.

That's really interesting. The problems with religion almost always seem to arise when things are imposed on others and freedom is curtailed.

I think it's more likely to happen with montheistic faiths as they can't cope with the idea of thier being more than one god, although Modi's Hindu party is doing a good job of trying to supress other faiths in India.