I also disagree with you Don.

Submitted by CanadianChris (Canada), Jan 10, 2009 at 16:44

I could go into the countless ways that Christianity does not promote 'free thought' but, my point was not so much to say that all religions are wrong and all religions should be fought. My point is that in our modern times, Christianity and Islam are two religions that are holding us back from our potential as humans, sure some people inside each religion find moderation and compromise with the secular world. But promoting the ideas of the bible or the Koran over the knowledge that can set us free which comes from science and free thinking philosophers, is a sin in my opinion.

Religions need to be encouraged to be kept in churches and homes, and the public life should discourage the promotion of any religion over another. Religious ideologies are a source of conflict and have been for thousands of years. In our modern times, we need to recognize the problems which religion brings to society and address them as ideas which are not necessarily evil in themselves, but become evil when they are used to discriminate against another philosophy. Islam is not alone in this context, Christianity has been used many times to discriminate against other religions or non-religious people.

There are many ways up the mountain, and we need to find a way to allow for those other paths that don't fit with our own rigidly held beliefs, and my own solution would require an internalization of religious life, and the prosecution against those to proselytize their religion. This also includes the indoctrination of children into specific religions. Children need to be taught respect for others as the first philosophy they are introduced to, not lessons on how their parents religion is superior to the rest of the world's religions. How this would be achieved is better left to wiser and more compassionate people than myself. But I do know that teaching children from a religious perspective is almost criminal when the teaching includes criticism of other beliefs. It starts a child out with discrimination in their heart instead of embracing the world as part of his or her family.

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