My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry.
P300 Peter Thatchell “My Nonreligious Life: A Journey from Superstition to Rationalism”
This could be a hard one to take for some. Peter started life in a very strict evangelical church in Australia. He saw all of the vengeance of God, and very little compassion. Fortunately he worked through it and is now an advocate for peace and justice issues. He lists the questions posed by Franco-German philosopher Baron D’Holbach as part of his reasoning process. He lists many crimes by religious groups against women and homosexuals.
The quantity of his evidence does not, in my opinion, support his conclusion that,
“overall, organized religion and the clerical establishment are, in most parts of the world, synonymous with intolerance and the abuse of human rights.”I support him in his work, and understand his anger, but a list of abuses is not enough to support that broad of a conclusion. Those abuses do need to be purged from religion, and I think Peter and many others are doing just that.
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