When Religion Runs a Country

Religious ideas on how to organize a society are just terrible. In every instance ever, forcing a religious belief onto a population, or having an entire society of one religion that makes laws based on that religion, means the worst possible outcome for that society. If you want rape, slavery, murder, abuse, misogyny, poverty, disease, corruption, war, and early graves to be the norm, just run your country on religion. From late Rome to feudal Europe to the middle east, dozens of countries tried running on religion, all with the same result.

(If you are a religious reader and think you are gonna “gotcha” me with “Atheist Russia”, read here first.)

But, just to remind us how stupid running a country on religion really is, Israel has decided to be exhibit A and lay out the obvious once again.

Israel. Land of the Jews, as dictated by some ancient unhappy goat-fucking tribesman that convinced people was from the mouth of God. Yep, God the real-estate developer, that is more interested in housing than not giving kids cancer. So based on God’s eternally confusing guidance, in 1948 actual humans had to do what God wasn’t able to do for almost 2000 years, give the Jews a place to call their own. And that’s when it all went to shit.

Jews all over the world are pretty decent folk. While it is a stereotype, the fact that Jews are seen as owning all the banking, Hollywood, big business, and are rich and educated pretty much tells you why people seem to hate them so much. They’ve done well for themselves. They are the behind-the-scene type of people, if you will. They don’t make waves, they make money. They don’t make policy, they pinch pennies. And let’s face it, they haven’t had their own country since CE 70. So they have never really had the chance to be the majority.

Jews are also not seen as a threat anywhere in the world, other than the one example I’m about to discuss. Jews have a reputation for being calm-headed, thoughtful, charitable, and even funny. (There are a lot of Jewish comedians.) The Jews don’t discriminate against Christians or Muslims or atheists. Hell, a lot of American Jews ARE atheists. You never hear of a Jew attacking a church or mosque. You never hear of a Jew spouting racist manifestos online then shooting up a school. You never hear of Jewish suicide bombers. You never hear of Jews marching in anger. They just live their lives in harmony with everyone else.

But as soon as the Jews got a country of their own, complete with Jewish law and Jewish customs, all that went to shit. In the past week, the people of Israel are far more likely to die of a weapon of war than of Covid-19. And we can play the “chicken or the egg” game here as to what escalated tensions, but the fact is the system gives the Palestinians almost no rights whatsoever, and gives the Israeli military the right to just walk in anywhere they want in Gaza and just start shoving things around. It doesn’t matter to me as much who pulls the first trigger, because it is Israel intentionally causing tension.

Do the Palestinians want to see all the Jews killed? Sure. I’m not calling them angels. But the Israelis also want to see all the Palestinians dead. And the point of this article is not to sort out who is a bigger racist, but to point out that once given the reigns of power, the Jews have done a fantastic job of becoming intolerant tyrants.

Israel began oppressing the Palestinians on day one. They restrict Palestinian’s movement, forcibly remove them from their homes and take their land, justify murders, cut them off economically, don’t allow them to vote, treat them as foreigners, and won’t allow them to inter-marry with the Jewish population. It’s worse than the Jim Crow laws in the American south.

The only difference between the Jews of the rest of the world and the Jews of Israel, is that the Jews have the power in Israel. Left unabated, religion destroys societies as it is destroying Israel and Gaza. This isn’t a bug, this is a FEATURE of religion. The problem is pretty easy to identify. These religions all believe that 1) Their deity is the only deity, and only they can tell you what he wants, 2) Bad things happen when people don’t do what their deity wants, 3) Their deity really hates women, gay people, people that have sex, people that believe in other deities, people that don’t believe in deities, people that dress wrong, blasphemers, apostates, people that eat or drink the wrong thing, and apparently liberals?, and 4) To make sure bad stuff doesn’t happen, treat all those people like shit until they convert or you kill them.

A helpful checklist of sin, but without “punctuation misusers”

Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s generally understood in non-dictatorship countries that the right to free speech is sacrosanct. Good ideas can come from anywhere or anyone, and that voice must be heard even if it means hearing things we may be uncomfortable with. It’s also understood in non-dictatorship countries that diversity is how we grow as communities by learning or experiencing new things, widening our economic outlook, and improving conditions for our fellow humans.

Israel has proven that when religion is given power, it is a train wreck. They have chosen the path of dictatorship over diversity. Throw in the Palestinian shit show, and all you have is a never ending war of “my myth is better than your myth.”

The Spartan Atheist