Ah humanity. How wonderfully consistent. Any time you get human beings in groups be they large or small they seem to want to start finding reasons to look down their noses at other groups of humans. One of the favorite reasons after race and gender is probably religion.
Now I'm fairly used to the kind of behavior that one gets from certain kinds of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. The Christians often being the most pernicious with some of them not only sneering down their noses at non Christians but even looking with disdain upon other Christians for being part of the wrong little subset of their religion. I'm also used to some members of the aforementioned religions, especially Christianity and Judaism playing the "Oh so persecuted" song over and over and over again. To hear some Christians tell it they were just walking along minding their own business when the Roman Empire singled them out for unfair treatment. Meanwhile you have Jews who want to act like the Holocaust only effected them, and that refusal to rubber stamp their claims about slavery in Egypt or to disagree with the actions of the Israeli government towards Palestinians makes one a rabid anti Semite.
Like I say I'm used to that sort of garbage from members of those groups and I am fairly good at kind of tuning them out. But when it comes from people with whom I feel a certain kinship? Well I supposed that for good or for ill I take things a bit more personally.
Those groups would be Atheists and Pagans. And frankly I'm seeing a lot more of this kind of stuff from some members of both groups than I'd like.
Persecution Now. Persecution Tomorrow. Persecution Forever.
From the Pagan camp I'm seeing memes that basically want to talk about either how much better Pagan's are than Christians, or as with the recent passing of Saint Patrick's day how horrible the persecution of Pagans was and how they are pretty much never going to let any of that bad stuff go.
Now I certainly can understand wanting to spread an awareness of history. And to be certain the Christians did some fairly awful things throughout history and even currently. But let's not act like the Pagans of old were a bunch of gentle fluffy kittens going around with nothing but love in their hearts. Many of the old forms of Paganism could be pretty harsh, and certainly many different Pagan tribes thought nothing of committing acts that we would consider horrific upon those they considered enemies.
Ultimately it seems to me there just comes a point where one needs to accept that the past happened and move on trying to build a better future.
I Think. Therefore I Am... Better Than You.
And then there are the Atheists. Now generally speaking I am on board with the Atheist "agenda". While personally I believe in a lot of rather odd things, and am willing to allow for the possibility of some kind of "creator" I certainly don't believe that such things should be taught in schools, or the basis for legislation.
But to be quite frank there is a level of arrogance from some Atheists that rivals and sometimes even exceeds that which can come from many Christians. A recent example was a smug self congratulatory picture that proclaimed that if in the majority Atheists would treat Christians better than Christians have treated Atheists. The problem however is that we have had proof thanks to the Communist states of Russia and China and their aggressive pursuit of the destruction of anything smacking of religious artifact, and the persecution of any religious practitioner, be they Christian in the case of Russia, or Buddhist in the case of China.
The simple truth of the matter is that when a group is in the majority it tends to wind up persecuting those in the minority unless it is very very careful to make and adhere to laws that ensure roughly equal treatment for all.
One would like to think that in this day and age as groups like Pagans and Atheists grow in number that they would look to the lessons of old, and do their best to ensure that should they ever become the majority they will not treat Christians, Muslims etc the way they have often been treated. But simply being Atheist or Pagan is no guarantee of that. In fact on the contrary the simple humanity that all share, Christian, Atheist, Muslim, Pagan alike and the flaws inherent within that condition suggest that unless they put forth great effort to make it otherwise things will end up falling out along the lines of that old Who song. "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." We won't get fooled again indeed.
Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!