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Religion Title: How Can Religion Let Loose Humanity's Most Violent Impulses Religion is just one part of the lethal cocktail, but it is a powerful intoxicant. The year 2015 has opened to slaughter in the name of gods. In Paris, two Islamist brothers executed Charlie Hebdo cartoonists “in defense of the Prophet,” while an associate killed shoppers in a kosher grocery. In Nigeria, Islamist members of Boko Haram massacred a town to cries of Allahu Akbar—Allah is the greatest! Simultaneously, the United Nations released a report detailing the “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims in the Central African Republic by Christian militias, sometimes reciting Bible verses. On a more civilized note, Saudi Arabia began inflicting 1000 lashes on a jailed blasphemous blogger—to be doled out over 20 weeks so that he may survive to the end. In media outlets around the world, fierce debate has erupted over who or what is responsible. Is monotheism inherently violent? Is religion an excuse or cover for other kinds of conflict? Are Western colonialism and warmongering in the root of the problem? Do blasphemers make themselves targets? Is the very concept of blasphemy a form of coercion or violence that demands resistance? Is killing in the name of gods a distortion of religion? Alternately, is it the real thing? Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10. #3. To: Gatlin, redleghunter (#0)
Religion following a supreme standard for morality as well as atheism without one can justify evil, and Atheism's Body Count testifies to the latter (helped by better tech). But the defines good and evil? Atheism has no supreme standard by which to hold them accountable, thus enabling wickedness if it seems reasonable to the atheists, yet which may lead relatively moral lives due to the innate sense of morality which Scripture affirms as well as societal influences.
Muslims also can lead relatively moral lives:
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) (Romans 2:14,15)
But both the objectively baseless moral reasoning of the atheist and the objective standard of the Muslim have competition, which includes Scripture/the Bible, though atheists tend to find it convenient to lump all religions together in their diatribes.
But the Bible is far larger and comprehensive than the Qur'an, which it actually claims to be an extension of, if only selectively, and which it critically is at variance with. The Qur'an is about the size of the New Testament and provides little context such as historical narrative or theological discourse such as would enable its many commands and exhortations to religious violence to be understood merely as defensive in nature or limited to a certain tribal people and geographical area, as in the Old Testament. And any type of "New Covenant" that replaces a physical theocracy with a spiritual one, and thus its means of warfare as well, and tolerance of other faith, as is the case with the New Testament, is missing, with the closet time being that of Muhammad's premedinic "revelations" in which is found the "Let there be no compulsion in religion" that liberals quote to prove the Qur'an does not teach religious violence.
And while the NT upholds the just use of the sword of men by the government, it never sanctions or provides for the church to employ it against theological dissidents, as instead disfellowship and spiritual power was the discipline employed. It was not Muhhamad but Christ who said,
My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. (John 18:36)
Further contrast is that before God commanded Israel to exterminate a terminally immoral destructive peoples, or even enter into a covenant to love/obey Him versus idols which cannot save them, then God first made it unmistakably supernaturally manifest that He was indeed directing them. They could be no rational atheists among them (though i believe most militant atheists would convince themselves they was a naturalistic explanation for any miracle), yet which did not prevent the Israelites from often becoming like atheists in word and deed.
In contrast, Muhammad just had some visions which he speculated could be demonic, but which apparently a Catholic monk said were from God. (And why not, as the CCC says RCs adore the same God as Muslims, which is hardly some unknown God as in Acts 17, but one with a distinctive and contrary theology.)
Thus the answer to the question, "Is religion an excuse or cover for other kinds of conflict?," is yes, but religion must be defined and also compared to atheism, and the religion of the Bible.
All for now.
#7. To: PeaceByJesus (#3) Religion is not spirituality. The former is a product of the collective herd which always seeks to suppress the Individual pursuit of the latter.
#10. To: VxH (#7)
Which is a broad brush presenting a false dilemma in order to justify an apparently inchoate belief. For regeneration thru repentant faith out of a humble contrite heart in the Lord Jesus to save you as a damned and destitute sinner results in a spirituality which He Himself taught and virtuous men and women exampled in Scripture.
Replies to Comment # 10. a broad brush presenting a false dilemma
The world’s first city developed around its temples, and only later did palaces play a role. Its view of the world was conditioned, as in all ancient societies, by totalitarian religious belief. So the picture that comes into focus is that of a theocratic command economy, hierarchically organized , centrally directed, and regulated according to an ideology propagated by a priesthood, playing the role that, 5,000 years later, Soviet Marxists would call ‘the engineers of human souls’. Such was temple rule. Kriwaczek, Paul (2012-03-27). Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization (p. 53). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition. No sale.
#12. To: PeaceByJesus (#10) (Edited) an apparently inchoate belief Inchoate? My what big word you use grandma. And such big, fallible and uninspired, teeth you have.
My relationship with my Creator stands in the light and the shadow of the immutable self-evident nature of the universe. That nature includes an inherent, Individual, desire to seek Him out despite the efforts of temple-perching parrots. Maybe what's "inchoate" is the self-worshiping "faith" of manipulative religious bee keepers who desire to transform the nature of human Individuals, crafted by several billion years of human evolution -- into their own flaccid, self-worshiping, temporally idolatrous image.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 10. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest |
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