"Fanatic"

What a change had happened though the centuries. Once religious people tortured and killed the nonreligious, now it was the nonreligious that controlled the religious. The religious, once an overwhelming majority, lost to science over time and now only formed tiny cults on the planet earth.

Now people found with religious objects, crosses, bibles, bowing to Mecca, stars of David, statues of Vishnu, are all locked in psychiatric hospitals and reeducated with the stories of evolution and the history of the sciences. The current hysteria closely resembles the years when there was a hysterical hunt for illegal drugs. Back when the dates used years numbered in thousands of years after the birth of a human named Jesus, the founder of the once mighty Christian religion, before the current date system based on the true age of the earth. Back then people in government police would break down doors looking for illegal drugs and lock people found with drugs in jail for excessively long periods of time, while ignoring the more serious problems of violence. In that time, antisexuality was at an all time high, and people were routinely given life sentences for rumors that they had images of nude children or had touched the genitals of young humans.

Now a similar hysteria pervaded the earth, but this was not to seize drugs or to stop sexuality. This cause, which humans are involved in, even publically, happens all the time now. Now people are seized on rumors that they wore a cross, that they used words like "god", "devil" in a way to indicate that such objects actually exist.

Many things had led to this system. Even if many religious were not violent, small groups of the most fanatically zealous of the various religions often performed terrorist acts, bombings, shootings, hijackings, parents killing their children claiming they were "possessed by the devil". Eventually, the nonreligious people, perhaps, overreacting, decided to systematically use theories of science to remove the religious from society, and thus, remove the threat of religious delusion and violence.

The nonreligious support science, pleasure, sexuality, logic and democracy more than anything else. They were able to use psychology to imprison and reeducate the Godders, Allahers, Christians, Judeo, Islamic, Hindi, Buddhists, Moonies, even the most recent cults to the more accurate theories of evolution and science. Because locking a human in a psychiatric hospital does not require a democratic trial, legal defense, or sentence, humans can be held for life in these "hospitals".

I am a human that argues for the release of these people, which is a losing cause. I tread a fine line myself in defending the religious. Those that defend the delusional can often be imprisoned in the psychiatric hospitals and forced to attend schooling.

My arguments are simple, no nonviolent people should be locked in a building. The psychiatric hospitals are nothing more than prisons, but hidden behind the guise of health procedures. Actual prison buildings form a completely different process. In the past the prisons were filled with nonviolent humans, but over time the system was cleaned up and reformed so that now no nonviolent people are ever locked in the prisons of earth, with the exception of people that restrain nonviolent people, repeatedly steal, or repeatedly touch against objection. All sentences are determined democratically, by the entire population of earth, or as many as will vote.

The arguments against freeing the religious are almost always the same; the religious are delusional and a danger to other people, the religious stubbornly believe in obviously delusional theories of ghosts, demons, gods, hell, that people go to a cloud filled heaven after they die... Here is a typical example of how these debates go: the religious claim that there is a soul, and that the soul is somewhere inside the human body, the nonreligious explain that the idea of a soul was common before the sciences of anatomy and health proved that the brain is the center of human muscle control and decisions. I do not argue that the religious are correct, that is never an issue. What is an issue is that humans should be allowed to be delusional as long as they are nonviolent.

Another fear that makes the nonreligious very excited and angry is the religious history of antisexuality, they argue that defending sex is to defend life since reproduction depends on sex and view any criticism of sex and physical pleasure as a threat to the continued existence of life on earth. I concede that this argument is valid, but that until an actual act of antisexual violence, for example, a nude person in public being attacked, or a nude statue being damaged, the religious human should not be locked in jail. It is the collective power and threat, the potential influence a religious revival might have that, I think, scares the non-religious majority the most.

Because of the stigma attached to the psychiatric hospitals, none of the religious will even defend fellow believers captured and locked in the hospitals. The embarrassment of knowing somebody locked in a psychiatric hospital is too much to bear, and is dangerous in case rumors spread that they are also religious. The same is true for those that are occasionally released or graduate from their "education". Nobody is proud of being locked in a psychiatric hospital for religious delusions.

A typical arrest happens like this:

Somebody produces images of a person wearing a cross, or audio recordings of a person admitting to believing in god (people some times gather secretly on special days to worship their religion, and indoctrinate younger humans) and people in the government police pull them over on a street or visit them at their house. The people in the police handcuff them and bring them to the nearest psychiatric hospital. Once there, the person is locked in a holding room until the extent of their "crime" has been determined. Again, unlike people arrested for violence or property theft, these people do not get a trial, a defense attorney, or even a sentence; they can be locked in this building for the rest of their life, even though they never hurt even so much as a mosquito.

People well versed in science then question the people and administer a series of tests to determine how much the person knows about the universe, about evolution, history, and science, in addition to what the extent of their religious brainwashing is. Many of these people have heard of evolution, but opt for a creationist theory, where a god makes the universe, earth, and typically the first man and woman. They are tested to see if they understand that the sun is a star, if they can list the 4 nucleotides of DNA, what they know about people like Volta, Malpigi, Huygens, Herophilus, Aristarcos, Servetus, ...how the mammalian respiratory system works, how engines work, ... typical questions about science knowledge.

If they score poorly they are sent to the starting level, the equivalent of elementary school, and on up to intermediate and advanced education in science.

Part of me appreciates this educating that I and most people get and naturally understand and enjoy from birth. It is only the ingrained tradition of the religious groups that keep some people from learning, understanding and accepting the cumulative wisdom learned by those who lived before us. But, at the same time, I think that people that chose to reject truth should not be imprisoned in any way, even if they may be a bad influence to other people.

Poor parts of the planet earth have strong traditions of religion. They do not learn that violence is wrong. For these people, pleasure is normally forbidden and punishments include brutal beatings. Much of a religion is driven by mating ceremonies, "marriage" ceremonies are deeply intertwined in the religious tradition and history. Metal garments and trinkets are exchanged and often worn for life symbolizing a sexual relationship between two religious humans. Marriage is viewed as religious, and dangerously antisexual by the nonreligious and can be punishable by hospitalization, although celibacy, and monogomous relationships are not viewed as hysterically. However, possessiveness or sexual jealously is a dangerous activity and viewed with suspicion by the nonreligious massive majority. The casual acceptance and practice of first strike violence by many religious people, unrealistic, and backward interpretations of the universe, all add to the hysterical fear expressed by a majority of humans.

At various points in their education the religious humans are tested to see if they still believe the religious fables, for example that Jesus rose from the dead, Moses parted a Sea, the face of Muhammed could not be drawn, in reincarnation, that there is an underworld full of fire, in the ancient idea of souls, etc... typical religious delusional or mythical beliefs.

For me, science should remain open to new ideas, but of course, religious ideas are old and well worn, obviously there is nothing religions have to offer to science.

We do not lock people in jail for obesity, drinking alcohol, lying, or drug addiction. What is obvious to me is that the religious have been singled out, perhaps unfairly, as the most dangerous. Perhaps this anger and hysteria is a result of the past, when religious groups were the majority and persecuted the minority of nonreligious people. The way that individual people were tortured and killed, people like Galileo Galilei, Chavlier De La Barre, the persecution, hospitalization, torture and killing of Jewish people, bisexual people, atheists, scientists and many others. Perhaps a thousand year pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

I wonder if some time the anti-religion hysteria will end, or if religion will die out first.