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Government isn't some nebulous body out there in the nether, government is that vehicle that voters drive to their own ends. Don't blame government blame the folks who demand that government do x, y, and z.
Either you need quotation marks or a citation pointing out where the Supreme Court has made such a statement.
Our federal government has engineered ways to escape accountability to the voters (revenue sharing for example), and even if individual office holders are tossed out by the voters, the big money interests they serve while in office will still be certain to reward them after they leave office as a message to those still in office.
If you can`t keep them from being paid off at some point in the future, you won`t be able to stop them from screwing us in the present.
The history of government and religion is very much a mixed bag.
Great harm has come to ordinary people when either the state or the prevailing religious institution have placed the interests of their respective ruling classes above those they are pledged to serve.
When both are united in corruption and totalitarian rule, there is no chance of one moderating the other, but when one is intact, the other may be reformed or at least restrained.
This is why the Founders were so brilliant in crafting a Constitution that preserves the independence of both the church and the state.
History teaches us that on many occasions, religion was the last line of defense against state tyranny and injustice.
It was Quakers who lead the efforts to abolish slavery in the US and UK.
Later, Baptists fought to end segregation and race-based oppression in the South.
It was the Roman Catholic Church in Poland that became the last refuge of the Solidarity movement that regained freedoms lost decades earlier.
Emboldened by their Christian faith, the White Rose Society challenged the Nazi State.
Confessing Church members in Berlin produced false identity documents including certificates of Aryan descent, driving licenses, and food ration cards used by Jews escaping Nazi Germany.
These are just a few examples of the church and people of faith serving as the last line of moral defense when the state had made right to be wrong and wrong to be right.
It was brilliant of the Founders to place the church out of the reach of the state.
It was brilliant of them to place all of the freedoms needed to challenge a tyrannical state in a single amendment such that it cannot be destroyed piecemeal.
It was brilliant of them to leave the remedy for the failing of the first amendment in a separate second amendment.
If you are a statist, if your religion is the state, if you believe the only difference between what is right and what is wrong is a law written and enforced by the state, then yes, to you, religion is quite dangerous.
I would say that the biggest threat is consumerism
Multi-national corporations have power that supersedes government authority. They do not operate in a free or even quasi-free market. They buy influence, use that influence to kill competition before it begins and operate as monopolies that have as much control of your lives as government. Meanwhile the first time anyone cries foul...they scream, free market, private enterprise....which of course are lies and more lies.
Statism: Ideas so good they have to be enforced at the point of a gun.
This is a very interesting video that challenges the brainwashing that most of us have been subjected to our entire lives. It's a little long, but makes some very good points. It's also interesting how most Statists hate religion but love the religion of statism.
Not religion, religion is used to steal land and kill others. Nothing to actually do with God, it's about those who lead and those who will be sheep.
You are somewhat correct, but you are making too strong of generalizations.
Religion in the most broad definition, is the natural condition of man. Humans are naturally "superstitious", and tend to look for a "meaning to life". While also wanting to create "social rules" for the interactions between individuals in society.
Even the most primitive people on Earth always have some form of religion/spirituality, and their social customs tend to reflect their spirituality.
With that said, I think religion is overall a benefit to humanity. And I think it is obvious that it has been beneficial to humanity, because otherwise it wouldn't exist. Or at least, it wouldn't be so ubiquitous throughout all of human history.
Now, I do agree that religion can be used for evil. This is especially true of "institutional religion", and it is at its absolute worst when religion becomes directly involved in the "state".
My concern, is that some religions have a more difficult time separating themselves from "the state" than others. The worst example of this is "Islam". The religion of Islam is effectively a "state". It creates all the functions of a state, and basically requires its followers to try to conquer and subjugate the entire world and bring them under the rule of Islam.
Now, that doesn't mean there isn't some abstract argument in Islam that could be made that supports anarchism. But the example set by Muhammad creates a formidable obstacle for such an argument. And the existence of the example of Muhammad makes any follower of Muhammad a potential danger to a free society, even generations removed.
Christianity, regardless of what people believe, is not tied in any way to a state or an institution. In fact, Jesus was fundamentally an anarchist. He had no appreciation or respect for the "state" of the time(the Roman Empire). Or any state for that matter.
To the extent that Christianity became involved with the state. It was not a result of Jesus, but rather of Paul. Who basically declared that "All governments were put here by god", and thus "All governments are legitimate"(which is where the whole concept of the "Divine right of kings" comes from).
Of course, if there were no government, then Christians would necessarily have to believe that that was also god's will.
With all that said, the goal of eliminating religion, is simply to eliminate barriers between people. Basically, religion separates people into communities. But religion is hardly the only thing which separates people, a simple disagreement over absolutely anything can separate people into different communities.
The reason why religion is hated, is because "the state", through indoctrination and propaganda, can usually mold public opinion over time to smooth out those disagreements. But disagreements between religions are to a large extent, irreconcilable.
Thus "the state" can replace religion, or religion can replace the state. But you cannot have both, and you cannot have neither.
Which is something the naive anarcho-socialists don't seem to understand.
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