Contrast that with the Spanish Inquisition that lasted for 356 years (1478 -- 1834 killing over 3,000 people and prosecuting over 150,000 people) that burned books, declared science "the devil's work," and burned thousands of innocent women at the stake for being "witches" -- the figment of religiously unhinged reasoning. Such historical stupidity and ignorance found a natural refuge in religious beliefs in gods, demons, witches, warlocks and other fanciful meaningless nonsense that cursed science and embraced superstition. Today, Muslims kill people for speaking ill of their Prophet Muhammad or defacing the Koran, their holy book, Jews, supposedly "God's Chosen People, according to Christian beliefs, reject the Bible AND Jesus Christ, Hindus believe in different manifestations of God and Buddhists believe in no god at all.
Have we left all of that superstition and pagan beliefs behind? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. But every Sunday, we still dress our best and go listen to a fallible human being extol the virtue of blindly believing in the power of prayer and allegiance to an unseen, unknowable being called Yahweh, Allah or Jehovah. Our fear of death and dying, a process started since we were born, (Socrates called it "preparing to die"), our love of life, and our basic ignorance about the nature of all things, open us up to superstition and unproven claims packaged as a "passport to heaven and the afterlife." Prayer, we're told is a powerful medium, we use it to communicate with God. But there is absolutely no proof that prayer works or does anything. It may make you feel good but the same feeling can be had by smoking a joint or taking three shots of good Tequila.
We're a vulnerable species thanks to our intelligence. We're easily swayed and influenced. That's the human condition. And its comforting to think that all our problems and chances of an afterlife, no matter how illogical and meaningless that sounds, can be found in some presumed holy book. That's easily answered y science -- the Law of the Negation of the Negation: one of the basic laws of Dialectics, which characterizes the direction of development, (including human development) as the unity of progress and continuity in development, the emergence of the new, and the relative recurrence of some elements of the old.
That's a natural law. You and I, no matter how we pray, read some holy book, or reinforce our belief systems by a Sunday morning activity, will change that. Our actions in this regard are meaningless and of no effect. And no, I'm not a destroyer of images used in religious worship. Yes, I'm the kind of person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions. I am an iconoclast. And proud of it.
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