I don't really care which direction the causation flows in, because both religion and racism require non-thinking and anti-thinking, and both of those things are definitely and without any doubt bad things. "Coincidentally", prevention of non-thinking, curing of anti-thinking, and encouragement of thinking leads to non-religious non-racist people.
(For what it's worth, my own observation is that all racist people are religious, and *most* but not all religious people are racist. Which leads me to conclude that causation generally flows from racism to religion. At the same time, there are religions whose defining characteristic is their racism, or homophobia, or sexism, or all three, or some other bigotry, where would-be converts are required to adopt the idiocy in order to be welcome in the community.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-09 04:05 am (UTC)(For what it's worth, my own observation is that all racist people are religious, and *most* but not all religious people are racist. Which leads me to conclude that causation generally flows from racism to religion. At the same time, there are religions whose defining characteristic is their racism, or homophobia, or sexism, or all three, or some other bigotry, where would-be converts are required to adopt the idiocy in order to be welcome in the community.)