Away with the fairies

¿Cómo atacan las religiones mis intereses económicos (¡mi pan!), aparte de los culturales?

Permíteme suscribir la visión de A. C. Grayling al respecto. Particularmente relevante es su artículo "Believers are away with the fairies", acerca del enfrentamiento creciente entre creyentes y no creyentes.

Me permito recortar, a modo de resumen trapero:

• Cogen (aún) más de nuestro dinero: Now Muslims, Sikhs and Jews receive public money for their own faith-based schools.

• Consiguen nuevos privilegios: [Laws] criminalising offensive remarks about religion, and allowing faith-based organisations to be exempt from legislation outlawing discriminatory practices.

• Acumulan un poder desproporcionado: The religious Right has political clout and can make a loud noise in the [American] public square, whereas the non-religious voice is muted.

Y destacar unas cuantas ideas tan obvias como tabú:

• Any increase in the influence of religious bodies in society threatens the de facto secular arrangement that allows all views.

• Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.

En consecuencia...

With such a view of religion - as ancient superstition, as a primitive form of explanation of the world sophisticated into mythology - it is hard for non-religious folk to take it seriously, and equally hard for them to accept the claim of religious folk to a disproportionate say in running society.