One
absurdity which, in my mind, rises above all others within the
concept of
defamation of
religion is the contrary existence of
theological exclusivity.
Every religion claiming to be the "one true religion" (which is most all of them) inherently proclaims the the
invalidity of all other religions. Simply put, almost every religion "defames" every other religion
by calling all the others lies. Though I don't wholly buy bull, were I to stand in the
street and decry the
Bible as a bunch of
malarkey, I'd be "defaming" the
book, and essentially defaming those who follow it by denoting them malarkey-followers. But this is precisely what the
Qur'an does, expressly calling out JC-Bible stories as lies; and similarly the Bible defames
Hinduism and
Buddhism and
Jainism and
Pandeism, and the
New Testament defames
Judaism by labeling as obstinate
sinners those who don't accept the whole of its story, and regular old
Christianity and
Mormonism defame one another, the one by claiming its
Scripture can not be added to, the other by claiming an addition to that Scripture which
must be taken as true.
So, then, let us get to the
bottom line. If we are to be
serious about preventing the "defamation of religion," we ought to begin by banning any theology which calls into
question the
validity of the
doctrine of any other theology. And once we were to do so, we'd be left with.... what?
Buddhism, possibly,
Unitarian Universalism, and some extremely liberal and open-ended variations of
Pandeism or
Pantheism.
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About 250 words for BrevityQuest11