Rebutting the Bishops

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has posted online their refutation of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops white paper "A Statement on Religious Liberty." The FfRF's "Our First Freedom" is excellent. Unlike the bishop's shoddy propaganda and faux history it is well written and well documented.

The hierarchy's pathetically weak grasp on religious liberty is somewhat understandable, though not excusable. Religions are, as I have repeatedly pointed out, authoritarian and as often as not intolerant. The founding scriptures of Christianity are loaded with passages that are unambiguously intolerant and hostile to other belief systems.

A small sampling of these passages include:

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;" (Exodus 20: 3-5)

Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.
Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;
For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 6: 13-15)

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people." (Deuteronomy 13: 6-9)

Basically, you are not to so much as think about another religion or you'll be severely punished (ie killed). Furthermore, you are expected to openly discriminate, persecute, and even murder those of another faith. Not a cornerstone of religious liberty or tolerance.

To this I'd add one more for good measure. After all, we wouldn't want to ignore the New Testament.

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Luke 19: 27)

That's right, that cute and cuddly love-thy-neighbor Jesus is also an intolerant homicidal bastard. When the founding figure of your faith is on record, so to speak, condemning all those of another faith to death it's time to throw in the towel on the claim that Christianity is a champion of tolerance and liberty.