Holy Books - Disabling Religious Replicators
Part Five
By Steve Gillman
Note: This is a continuation from Disabling
the Religious Replicators - Instilling Fear.
Religious replicators are covered here: Natural
Selection in the Viral Spread of Religion.
Replication Strategy: Holy Books
Holy books and now movies, videos, tapes, CDs and other recordings
are a powerful way to keep a religion alive and spreading. I
used the example previously of how they can be sent forth like
small pox infected blankets were sent into the Native American
wilderness to do their evil without human contact. This is perhaps
a bit unfair, not in terms of the parallel in consequences, which
is clear, but because of the intent. Most religious people do
not actually wish to destroy others, and are just ignorant of
the immorality and danger of their faiths.
In any case, recording religious stories and rules is a great
strategy. It provides an "ultimate authority," as in
the case of the sacred books of most religions. It carries the
ideas forward without much danger of corruption, especially if
those words are considered sacred. It introduces new converts
to the faith, without the necessity of an existing member with
good preaching skills.
How can we counter this, and prevent the danger that spreads
with these immoral ideas? Here are a few ideas on that
Reducing The Number Of Holy Books
I support people's right to say what they want, write what
they want and read what they want, so I can't support outlawing
any books. Short of that, then, how do we reduce the numbers
of these hateful books? We could complain about the Bibles found
in hotels and motels in The United States, asking that they be
removed them or our own books on atheism allowed to be there
as well. If enough of us did this, many hotels and motels might
want to just be done with the issue, and have no books at all.
It is a small start, but better than nothing.
As mentioned previously, we can also fight for fairness in
taxation. The freedom from property taxes enjoyed by churches
enables them to use that money saved for producing more hateful
literature. We do not get a tax exemption for preaching our ideas.
It seems only fair that they shouldn't either.
Creating Anti-Holy Books
Perhaps a solution is to spread our own in similar ways. There
are already good books outlining the falsity and evil of religious
beliefs. One could also create a booklet showing the rewards
of love and rationality instead of faith. These might be spread
specifically in those areas which have the most devout religious
followers.
Another approach here is to print our own versions of the
existing holy books. In these versions there could be notes by
each passage reporting on real atrocities which were justified
by it. While it is true that there are many ways to interpret
some writings, there is no mistaking the meaning of a line like,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," nor is there
any question as to the historical results of that belief.
Continues here... Social
Conformity |
