Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Thoreau's saying

I was thinking more of the church.
Mary Anne — (archived)

I find the prospect of being "saved" much scarier than any government "help".

It's been my experience that religious organizations are bossier and more intrusive. Governments can jail you and take your property; churches can, and do, isolate and ostracize citizens, making them targets and prisoners in other ways. Ask someone who's been driven into bankruptcy because of a whispering campaign concerning his lack of "righteousness".

Certain flavors of a particular demoni-- oops, denomination have co-opted a major party in the US; they have governmental power too, exercised in an oblique way. Religious organizations have a long history of holding government power, and have been the government for long stretches as well.

Thoreau wrote his essay On Civil Disobedience to explain his willingness to go to jail for refusing to pay his taxes. He considered paying taxes to a government that supported slavery, and that was prosecuting the "Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool", to be complicitous in the unlawful acts of government.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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