From a netfriend:

One of the mainstays of truth, and a characteristic of the modern age, is the ability to question and criticise. Only those things that can be sustained in the face of a critical evaluation really have any claim to their integrity and our allegiance. Critical evaluation is the tool that has liberated humanity from all kinds of oppression. It has given us science and freedom from superstition.

It is therefore interesting to observe the ploys that have been used to elevate areas of human thought and human power structures beyond criticism.

In politics we can see that when governments have opposition party members and others arrested on trumped up charges.

The games played in religion are equally devious. Observe what comes into play when people try to exercise critical evaluation and exercise their freedom of thought.

We can see that easily when we observe Islam from the outside and notice that any critique of the Koran or any conversion from Islam is met with the sanction of death. Here are some sanctions to assure people they may not critically evaluate!

Judaism exercises a devious ploy. Any questioning of Judaism, any critique of Jewish beliefs, is met with accusations of “anti-Semitism”. Let me ask you, is it possible to question Judaism, to be critical of it, without being accused of being an “anti-Semite”? Anytime anyone criticises Judaism, the ghost of Adolf Hitler and others is conjured up and stamped upon the person who has dared to criticise. Does this ploy effectively elevate Judaism beyond criticism?

Christianity, or at least its fundamentalist forms, also has a means of elevating beliefs beyond criticism. Some primitive savage announces that “God has said”. Our tendency to recognise in this announcement the cultural bias and primitive mindset is stifled by elevation of this announcement to the infallible “word of God”. Antiquity, which normally is an indicator of error, becomes the cloak that elevates a statement to infallible status. We can see that beginning to happen in 1st century Pharisaic Judaism, and carried into the fundamentalist Christianity of today.

The problem with elevation beyond criticism is that even the proponents know it is a game, and their insecurity is displaced into an obsessive and even violent persecution of those who dare to challenge the ploy.