Look we can criticize religion for its issues all we want but in this specific case, they are using religion as a tool to get what they want. If it weren’t for religion, they would use something else.
“Terrorists are using VPNs to evade law enforcement”
Or maybe something racism related
Fascist/authoritarian governments always use something to control the public.
they are using religion as a tool to get what they want.
This is what religion has always been used as. Religious law existed before civil law, because it’s easy to get people to do what they’re told if they believe that their godlike creator will punish them eternally for breaking the rules.
Again, how did people convince the world that gay sex is not only taboo but something to be entirely shunned and punished?
You tell them that it’s a sin before the eyes of “God”, who in his anger will turn you and anyone who even looks in your direction into a “pillar of salt” or whatever. Remember the existence of “sodomy” (read: homosexuality) in Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t just something bad, it was an mortal sin that supposedly wiped entire towns off the map, as they want you to believe that what your neighbor does in their bedroom isn’t just their own business but also an existential threat to your entire society. In the literal interpretation of all 3 Abrahamic Religions, it’s not enough to avoid homosexuality yourself, it has to be eliminated from society entirely lest we all end up like Sodom and Gomorrah…
And for what? Obviously we all know that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is pure bullshit, even many religious people today hopefully don’t take it literally…
But the simple truth is that someone, thousands of years ago, felt disgusted by homosexuality and created a big lie about it in order to convince people that gayness anywhere in society would eventually bring about God’s wrath. And that utter fucking bullshit has lead to thousands of years of fear, discrimination, violence and hate, lasting even today in various degrees throughout the world. Humanity chose to go down this path when we chose to believe in religious lies.
Because THAT is exactly what religions does–that is what religion was designed to do: to keep people in line, to oppress undesirable people and qualities out of society, to avoid coming face to face with the unknown, and to impose the will of the few on the populace at large. Religion tells people what to eat, what to fuck, when and how they can listen to music, how to live and how to die. Outside of a few exceptions, it’s mostly a toxic ideology that empowers nobody and oppresses billions of people all over the world, and to top it all off, it’s just a bunch of fake, make-believe bullshit.
