Quote:
Originally Posted by nonnywood76
Rick
I can see what are you saying and it makes sense. But like Ben said if we exclude one why not exclude all? I will not respect anyone that uses religion to condone murder, but I will pray for a cure to their ignorance and I will forgive them their stupidity.
To forget is stupid
To forgive is divine  |
Maybe an alternative approach is to question the rationality of the religious beliefs that result in the death and destruction that we saw on September 11th, 2001.
I think most of us know that that it's really only a matter of time before the Muslim extremists obtain nuclear or biological weapons to carry out "God's order to kill Americans" on a wide scale. Instead of killing 3,000 people as happened in 2001, next time it could be three million.
How though, can we question the rationality of their religious beliefs without questioning the rationality of America's religious beliefs? They take orders from an invisible God the same as Christians in America do.
Bill Maher explains it this way in the movie documentary “Religulous:”
"Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, “I’m willing, Lord. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their corruptions and limitations and agendas.
This is why rational people, anti-religious people, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes with a terrible price.
If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife with the true devils of extremism who draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers."
And Sam Harris author of, "The End of Faith" says:
Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word “God” as though we knew what we were talking about. And they do not want anything too critical said about people who really believe in the God of their fathers, because tolerance, perhaps above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world – to say, for instance, that the Bible and Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish – is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.
We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other world worth wanting.
It is imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most of our religious beliefs. I fear, however, that the time has not yet arrived. In this sense, what follows is written very much in the spirit of a prayer.
I pray that we may one day think clearly enough about these matters to render our children incapable of killing themselves over their books. If not our children, then I suspect it could well be too late for us, because while it has never been difficult to meet your maker, in fifty years it will simply be too easy to drag everyone else along to meet him with you."
Rick