^{SMART people believe in freedom of thought for all people but they also want to destroy religion. So what about the freedom to be religious?}

^{Firstly, a distinction should be made between believing in a God, and being an active member of an organized religion. Of course everyone should be free to believe in whomever or whatever they want, including a heavenly super-power, or even a devil with horns! However, that kind of personal freedom of thought is very different from the freedom to join and participate in an organized religion.}

^{Freedom is an interesting concept. Everyone wants as much of it as possible for themselves but they can never achieve it totally because then their freedom would encroach on the freedom of others.}

^{If religions were just benign groups of people having personal and private thoughts about a God up in the sky they would be no problem to anyone. But religions are much more than that. They are organizations whose purpose is to manipulate, control and extort as much money as possible from their membership.}

^{Religious leaders all perpetrate the big lie - that they are special people, chosen by the creator of the universe to do His will on Earth… and that means the followers must abide by the “rules” as dictated by those leaders. The lie is reinforced by threats of a possible hell after death for "sinners", and coercion to extract money out of the gullible and deluded. When these hapless followers meet people from other religions (who have different leaders with different rules) the result is often any combination of hatred, intolerance, acts of violence, and even wars.}

^{Religious people want the freedom to belong to their religion but what about the right of everyone else to live in a world free from all the misery and trouble that religion causes?}

^{On reading this some religious people will undoubtedly protest, "But my religion is all about peace, love and understanding of religious differences”. SMART will concede that some religions are worse than others but, to varying degrees, they all suppress the human spirit. By invoking the concept of "sin", all of them cast a pall of fear and guilt over their followers. All of them use the myth of some kind of afterlife to keep their followers in line and abiding by the rules of their particular religion. All of them extol the virtues of Emperor religion's new clothes!}

^{All governments impose limits on personal freedom. All responsible governments try to protect their citizens from powerful and corrupt undesirable organizations. It’s time that protection was extended to include all religions.}