>
> Maybe we differ over freedom of religion. While I have a strong belief
> in freedom of religion I am uncertain as to your position on this
> question. While, as Marx said, religion remains the opiate of the
> masses, there can be no freedom of religion. It does appear that you
> have positioned religion as an opiate, thereby denying the right to
> freely practice religion.
>
Once examined, the clever paradoxes of this paragraph seem to reveal
assumptions that aren't clever at all. What are you saying here? That as
long as some number of non-religious people regard religion as the opium of
the masses, religious people can't regard themselves as free or practice
their religion freely? First, how many other people have to disapprove for
the religious to be, or feel, threatened? Millions of people? One? If
freedom to practice religion is written into law, isn't that all you can
fairly require? I've noticed that when American fundamentalists argue, they
seem to feel that ANY disagreement persecutes them; "freedom" for them means
their freedom, their power, no one else's. But this is the sort of
defensive self-righteous illogic to which religion (like the secular
ideologies that mimic it) leads.
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