Sent to The Star, Johannesburg, Tue
10/11/2015 08:22. Published Wed 11/11/2015,
as “Religion must obey same rules as rest of society”.
I refer
to The Star
leader page’s Little Spot today, Tuesday November 10, “Religion needs
regulation”, by Thabile Mange, Comment by preacher Ray McCauley “Causing consternation”,
and the front-page article “Pray for rain, public urged” by reporter N Nkosi.
Religion
gets far too easy a ride, and privileges it does not deserve.
In the
process, superstition is encouraged, and progress is held back.
Prayer
is ineffective at best, if not actually counter-productive.
For
perhaps 10,000 years, the human race has conducted the experiment of praying to
different gods. If any gods answered prayer, it would be obvious by now
in the sustained success of the followers of those particular gods. It
would be obvious which gods are real.
Instead,
we have a proliferation of dozens of religions, with several, if not thousands,
of sects, each claiming to represent the only true god.
Common
sense should show that religion is one big confidence trick. It persists
because parents indoctrinate their children while they are too young to think
for themselves.
Yet,
regulating religion would interfere with
people’s freedom of speech, conscience, and association.
The
answer is to subject religion to the same rules as all other aspects of
society.
There
should be no rates- or tax exemptions for religion and its practitioners.
Preachers claiming “miracles” should have to prove them, or face fraud charges.
