Heartland

Erudite wrote: Neither should a large percentage of the world's population be living in poverty or quietly starving to death.
But I, for one, am a product of the world as it is, not how I would like it to be.
Accordingly, I debate it on those grounds.

What I meant to say was that in my opinion it shouldn't be a taboo to criticise religion. There is this legal paragraph, at least in Germany, about "hurting religious feelings" being unlawful. At the same time you can go and ridicule and insult feminists, vegetarians, fat people, ... basically everything and everyone. It really upsets me why religious feelings should be more worthy of protection than any other feelings and opinions.
I hope it makes more sense now

About as much as anything else does in the world.

Sita wrote:What I meant to say was that in my opinion it shouldn't be a taboo to criticise religion. There is this legal paragraph, at least in Germany, about "hurting religious feelings" being unlawful. At the same time you can go and ridicule and insult feminists, vegetarians, fat people, ... basically everything and everyone. It really upsets me why religious feelings should be more worthy of protection than any other feelings and opinions.
I hope it makes more sense now

We have something similar in the UK: the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However that does have free-speech protection built in:

Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

IMO religion(s) is/are an idea like any other and ought to be able to stand or fall on their own merit without needing protection from the state.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... about.html

Shorter Benny the Rat: The church has never been anti-Semitic, the Holocaust didn't have roots in Christian anti-Semitism, and anyway the Holocaust was a plot against Christians. (:eek:) Oh and Jews need to convert to Catholicism.

Wow.

He said similar strange and even stranger stuff on other occasions!
And he recently took back the excommunication of Pius Brotherhood Bishops, an ultra right wing organisation who view the declaration of Human Rights a "deadly sin", etc etc - and of course deny the Holocaust.
I thought this cartoon was hilarious:



"I don't believe in the Holocaust" "Nevermind, in questions of faith we're pretty tolerant"
Source:
Cicero, Magazin für Politische Kultur, Februar 2010