Freedom of Religion

Freedom of religion is widely considered to be a human right. But by the very definition of a human right, it is the right of a human being, not the right of a deity. There can be no right for a deity to impose his or her rules over humans and call this a human right. It might be a divine right, but this is certainly not what human rights are supposed to be about.

Religions are a community of believers at best, and no human right protects the privileges of communities, human rights only protect individuals.

The term "freedom of religion" was actually based on the concept "freedom from religion". No individual should be forced by the state to obey certain religious doctrines. Every individual should be free to believe whatever he or she wanted, no matter what the predominant religion of his or her country was. This is what freedom of religion is about.

Unfortunately today religious community abuse the term "freedom of religion" to enforce their doctrines on others.

A recent example is Germany, where ritual circumcision of minors has been banned by a court decision. Now Jewish and Muslim organizations claim that their human rights, their "freedom of religion" has been violated. They fail to understand that their religion does not enjoy any freedom under the protection of human rights. Only individuals, in this case underage children, enjoy any protection of human rights. They are protected from physical mutilation by their parent,s before they are old enough to make such severe decisions on their own.

The whole issue of "freedom of religion" seems to be too complicated for religious people to understand. They don't understand that it only means that nobody can be told what to believe. It does not protect any faith or any religion.

The best solution would be to avoid further confusions and abolish the idea of "freedom of religion" at all. Religion should not be mentioned in the context of human rights. The right of everybody to hold any opinion he wants and not to be persecuted for it, is already protected by other human rights. There is no need to mention religious opinions separately.

Organized religions should not have a right to their existence. Religion is a mental disorder. To protect a religion is like protecting schizophrenia. It is time to strip religions from any kind of privileges or protection. We might not want to force religious people to undergo treatment for their mental disorder, but they should certainly not get any special acknowledgement for it.

Religion is no value, it is a erroneous method of thinking. It is a serious problem that affects the capacity of logic reasoning. Therefore measures should be taken to encourage people to overcome religion. Furthermore we cannot allow people that suffer from religion to make important decisions, which means their political rights need to me restricted, if it becomes obvious that they make decisions based on superstitious believes instead of reason.

It would be wrong to show tolerance towards religion, just as it is wrong to show tolerance towards any other mental disease. They are diseases and as such they are a problem.

If humanity wants to become a truly intelligent lifeform, we have to overcome religion and other forms of superstition. It is time to take decisive measures against religions. We need a zero-tolerance policy against any kind of public expressions of religion.

Nobody can be told what to think, but there can be limits to what he is allowed to do in order to prevent harm from others. And spreading a mental disease is certainly harmful for others. Making statements that you can't prove, is wrong, and it should be treated as such. Therefore religion needs to disappear from the public.

Religious people have been treated with too much leniency for far too long. We have to treat them as what they are - as some sick people.

Nudity

The odd relationship between nudity and modern religions defies any logic. For unknown reasons all of today's world religions abhor the the idea of not having the human, especially the female, body covered by some kind of clothes. The most extreme cases are the islamic dress codes that include covering the face. The influence of these religions has made most countries to enact laws effectively banning nudity even for people who don't belong to these superstitious cults. Even the guidelines of the provider of this blog has such restrictions in place banning me from adding a fitting illustration to this topic.

What might be the reason for such irrational restrictions?

Considering that nudity is the natural state of human beings and therefore inevitable during certain circumstitions like birth, body hygiene and replacement of clothes, it appears counterintuitive that there are legal restrictions against nudity instead against excessive clothing, which might sometimes be a security concern.

The restrictions against nudity are apparently related to religion. The more religious a country is, the more restrictive it is against nudity, which can be seen by comparing Europe with Saudi Arabia to name just two examples. Historically the origin of this taboo can be found in the so called Abrahamic religions, although modern India, which is predominantly Hindu, is very restrictive in this matter too. However this seems to be caused by many centuries of Islamic influence. Ancient India before its first contact with Islam seems not to have had this taboo as we can see by the depictions of ancient Hindu temples. Therefore the common denominator of the irrational taboo of nudity seems to be the Abrahamic faith. It might therefore be a good idea to look at the scriptures of these religions in order to find the reasoning behind it.

Since the quran is no original scripture but based on Christian and Jewish sources, we only need to look into these older scriptures. Considering that the Abrahamic faith believes that its deity is the creator of nature, it is quite ironical that the "Work of God" should need to be covered by a "Work of Man". The opposite would make more sense. There would be good reasons that Abrahamic religions should ban clothes and instead require humans to be nude with few exceptions. According to the book of Genesis, the first book of the bible, that includes the Jewish/Christian creation myth, the origin of wearing clothes is closely related to the Original Sin and man's expulsion from paradise.

Genesis 3:6 - 3:11:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 

From this chapter of the torah/bible it is quite clear that clothes are a serious offense to the Abrahamic god and therefore sinful. If we follow the religious logic, clothes are the work of Satan (the serpent) and should therefore be banned.

Nevertheless the opposite is the case. Religious people don't get tired settig up minimum requirements of how much clothes needs to be worn. The reason for it is obviously not a divine revelation as we have seen. It seems to have something to do with the general stance towards human sexuality. 

Nudity is associated with sexuality. This is why it is opposed with or without being based on the scriptures. The hatred of the Abrahamic religions against sexuality is also visible in the eagerness of these people to mutilate the genitals of their offspring. The Abrahamic religions have become a refuge for people with severe sexual disorders that enables them to justify their aberrant behavior. If somebody is for some reasons incapable of normal sexual relationships, he naturally seeks refuge in religion. This is how religions have become an asylum for people with all kind of sexual perversions. There are the pedophile Catholic priests; there is Islam with its sex-obsessed prophet raping captives and abusing a 7-years-old girl; and there is the overproportional ratio of homosexuality among Arabs and Catholic priests and monks.

These people have used the power of their religious institutions to influence the society according to their personal sexual aberrations.

This is why we have restrictions on nudity everywhere: in publications, broadcastings, public places. They can be found everywhere, in any country of the world, although they make no sense at all and defy any attempt to understand their reasoning. We have allowed pathologically aberrant people to dictate our laws. Perverted behavior has become so commonplace that we don't even dare to question it. And we have to live with insane laws that seem to be made in a madhouse.