Quote:
Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness
irrelevent.
i don't care about the interpretations of the doctrines.
i'm an atheist, and view Judaism mostly as a national identity.
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I'm not saying a country should embrace specific doctrines regarding the religion, but i AM saying that countries who are predominantly Christian would care more about what happens to their fellow Christians overseas.
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But it is relevant to such a government that you don't care and are an atheist. If a civil government locks in with a specific religion, they will run around the world engaging in 'holy retribution' and it is inevitable they will not permit internal contamination either. Atheists have to keep their ideas in the closet under "religious-aligned" governments. Its one reason the US strives to stay secular despite repeated attempts by the evangelical zealot faction to rewrite history and bring about a theocracy.
I used the term J-C-I (judeo-christian-islam) because they are part of the same Abrahamic tree and share many characteristics and behaviors. But as for this story, you could freely substitute the religions involved and the locations and it would match many news items on record or historical events: (Hindi:Muslim:India, Muslim:Hindi:India, Shia:Sunni:Iraq, Sunni:Shia:Iran, Catholics:Jews:medieval Italy, Catholics:Protestants:Ireland, Christian Nazis:Jews:Poland, etc etc etc) Give a specific religion power over a government and things will not usually go well for others, either internally or externally.
I only speak for myself but I would not want the government where I live sticking its nose into matters because "<insert specific religion here>" people were being persecuted. It'd better be because *
people of any kind* were being persecuted , and it'd better be
worth the national interests to do so. Despite the efforts of evangelical zealots to rewrite history or pretend otherwise, my particular country was established as a secular nation and in writing has asserted that it is not a country of any particular religion. It has certainly been at various points racist, xenophobic, exclusionary, stupid, misled ... but those were and are problems to be fixed rather than goals to achieve as fighting-the-stupid is a never-ending battle.