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Alilatias t1_iqzv3lc wrote

Some people say this will never happen, but as long as blowhards who are trying to chip away at the fabric of our society keep getting elected into positions of power, the threat will continue to exist.

I keep being reminded of Iran's current struggles, and the conditions that led to it. The people who fled Iran after their so-called revolution would tell us of how the cities used to be extremely progressive by the standards of the nations in the region, and we see pictures of women not having to hide their humanity taken lifetimes ago. But what seems to get lost in that explanation is that the rural areas were still full of extremist nutjobs, and they took complete power under the guise of ending corruption and wrecked everything. And now the Iranians have to take to the streets trying to reverse that, protesting for the right for their women to be treated with decency.

What happened to Iran should be taken as a warning to us. We did barely avoid an attempted coup, after all. One could also argue that the Supreme Court itself is an attempted coup in progress at the judicial level too.

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logicalfallacy234 t1_ir2dlhq wrote

Have spent the last year and a half working on an epic play about the Revolution! And what motivated/is behind both the 1979 Revolution, and the current world's falling back to religion.

I do think the Iranian mullahs, and most religious people even, do have a case for a faith-based life, rather than a purely empirical evidence based on.

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Alilatias t1_ir2fdn9 wrote

Definitely, there is nothing wrong with a faith-based life. It's when it crosses the line into being used as a bludgeon to justify taking away the rights of your fellow human beings that it basically transforms into something else entirely.

Religion seeks out power, perhaps as a means for the faith to survive. But we've seen that there's also a point where that same power can corrupt, and attract followers to the religion that aren't seeking the actual faith, but the influence it wields.

Indeed, I'm not sure the most powerful Christians in America holding public office or the courts even believe in the faith at all, and are just appealing to the extremists as a means to retain their power.

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logicalfallacy234 t1_ir2har0 wrote

Yup! My understanding is that for a lot of faith based people, they feel the only real way to bring that faith into the world is through politics. To them, the separation of church and state is a non-sequitur.

The Islamist philosopher Sayyid Qutab (who influenced a half century now of radical Islamism) felt that that idea of separation of the material and spiritual worlds agreed on in Ancient Greece is the central mistake of the Western world, that has caused all of its suffering. The way around that suffering IS making church and state one and the same.

I feel like a lot the modern radical Christian movement in America has arrived at that same thought, albeit usually less well-articulated, and aided by good old, Roman Empire style imperialism and racism.

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FlaxxSeed t1_ir2tsp6 wrote

The problem is when their sexuality is attached to the religion, example, marriage. They are in the death cult and their brain's reward synapses are attached to the cult. There is no going back they are destroyed and should be viewed as such, like you would perminate brain damage.

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