Hiding Behind Religion
Religion is a matter of personal choice to believe something, not an inborn fact of a human being. Humans must be taught to believe and accept that what they believe is not subject to any testing.
Despite claims that this or that religion is the one, true religion, there is no way of knowing, of proving that claim. Individuals tend to create their own personal religion in their minds.
When the Bible says “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain”, I interpret that as meaning “So help me God” at the end of civil oaths, “In God We Trust” on money, “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are all blastphemy, i.e. “in vain”, but that is what I believe, and I can’t prove it in a rational sense.
What happened in Paris at Charlie Hebdo was murder, not a religious act. It was an act of terrorism, an attempt to censure the media. There are laws in place in many places that already block the satirical magazine’s import because of a perceived need to protect religions from satire. They were passed to protect primarily Christian beliefs in the West, but they also protect other belief systems from ridicule. France and Denmark don’t have these laws, nor does the US.
This is no different than the murders and bombings at women’s health clinics in the US, or the destruction of abolitionist newspapers in the 19th century. The people who do it might claim religious justification, but that doesn’t make it any less of an act of terrorism, and supposed religious belief cannot be tested, so it shouldn’t be considered a mitigating factor in the punishment for the acts.
The claimed belief about the depiction of religious figures is not limited to Islam, there are many Christian sects who belief the same thing based on the prohibition against ‘graven images’. This was the cause of a major schism in the early Christian Church, and a lot of early Christian art was destroyed during that period.
I have a quote of Heinrich Heine in German on my sidebar that translates loosely: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people.” This as an attempt to make people censure themselves by making them afraid.
The majority of Muslims probably object to the anti-Islamic cartoons printed in Charlie Hebdo, but only a few whackos would use that as an excuse to murder people. A large number of Christians probably object to what they think is going on at women’s health clinics, but only a few whackos have used that excuse to murder people.
11 comments
If you use religion as the excuse for crimes then the punishment should be as if one used a gun in commission of a crime.
That only leaves me to consider when a gun is used in support of religious justification for crimes. Perhaps the perpetrator should be sent to his god as fast as possible. (This, from a guy who doesn’t support the death penalty.)
I don’t support the present form of the death penalty, but if there is no question as to guilt and the individual is claiming to be justified because of his/her beliefs, then I’d have no problem pulling the switch or taking the shot. If you can’t mess with religious beliefs, as in deprogramming, and you can’t in the US, then you can’t rehabilitate the defendant, so why go to the expense of feeding them? Let God decide if they were right.
The problem in the US is that a lot of Christian fundamentalists assert that their “freedom of religion” means that secular laws with a secular purpose… e.g., using tax money to pay for women’s health care, including contraception and abortion… should be overturned if the things they pay for are things the fundies’ religion disapproves of. And with a 2/3 majority of Catholics on the Supreme Court these days, that’s how the rulings go in too many court cases.
SO… would conservative American Catholics seek to jail me, or even kill me, for infringing their “freedom of religion,” i.e., their alleged “freedom” to impose the constraints of their religion on my (hypothetical) spouse?
Here’s a new commandment for them: “THOU SHALT NOT impose thine own THOU SHALT NOTs on Americans of religions other than thine own!”
Oh, so this is a site whose platform decides for me just which character entity ref’s I can use and which I cannot use, e.g., “⅔”… MY FREEDOM OF RELIGION IS BEING INFRINGED! 🙂
Last things first 2⁄3 isn’t available in all fonts, nor displayed by all browsers which is why I use sup/sub tags with the character entity “#8260” to produce the same result except for the quarter and half fractions.
Besides your Freedom of Religion is infringing on my Freedom of the WordPress – so there. 😉
It has always amazed me that many of the people who scream about their Freedom of Religion or Freedom of Speech don’t seem to understand that their freedoms don’t include the right to impose their religion or speech on other people. I’m not interested in other people’s religion on any level other than historical or sociological pointers, and I certainly don’t want them altering the way I live my life because of what they claim to believe. I say claim because there is no certain way of determining what someone actually believes.
Good trick with 2/3; thanks. Yes, I figured it was probably a font that didn’t have the one-character two-thirds available; a lot of commonly used fonts do support it, and I confess I’ve grown accustomed to using it… especially since there came to be six Catholic Supreme Court Justices. If one could construct one’s own character entity ref’s, I’d make one that I could call out by the string “&HobbyLobby;” that maps to two-thirds. Who would ever have anticipated the age we live in in America!
I have no great interest in anyone else’s religion, unless they attempt to impose its practices on me; at that point, I can get downright nasty about it. Just for being a UU (remember, three US Presidents were Unitarians, and we usually claim TJ as well), I have been called “dangerous” and told I’m going to Hell… well and good; it’s the one (hypothetical) place I can depend on my not being harassed by fundamentalist Christians!
Frankly, any place that was filled with fundamentalists would qualify as ‘Hell’ for me [and them, to the best of my ability to annoy.] Consider, if I’m there it must be Hell by their own definition. Telling me I won’t be stuck for ‘an eternity’ with a bunch of whackos is a feature, not a bug.
Yes, that is a useful little construct because it works with anything in the numerator or denominator positions. I have a text file of similar structures so I don’t have to remember how to type them.
Religion is nothing other than a means for human’s to rationalize and justify anything and everything, no matter how evil, or good for that matter.
I oppose things such as death penalties, not on any altruistic or moral grounds, or because i don’t think some people don’t deserve to die. I killed plenty and arranged for the death of others that I believed deserved it. All of them had killed many innocents and caused much terror and destruction. I am no hypocrite. No… My objection is simply that no government or politician can be trusted to make that decision.
I always liked the quote from “Man On Fire” paraphrased by Gen. Schwarzkopf: “Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.” 🙂
And that was my job. 🙂 And if there is a God… Then he and I will sort it out one day.
I also like the Holmes quote: “Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them!”
Throughout the Bible, the main role of governments was to protect its people from threatening invaders and to maintain law and order within its borders. This was done by maintaining a military force.
John 19:11: “Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above…”
Romans 13:1-5:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,
For he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.
Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.”
And so on. Of course, as we know… it ain’t always so! 🙂 Maybe in a perfect World… but then, there would be no need for a God. 🙂
I have never used religion or God to excuse or justify anything I have done. And I never will.
“God made me do it” is no more believable than “The devil made me do it”, they are variations on “but all of the other kids are doing it” – childish excuses for bad behavior.
I have often remarked that I can never be a ‘good Christian’ because there are things that I will never forgive or forget. Telling me that Adolf Hitler could have gone to Confession prior to his death and then been a candidate for “Heaven” is just too absurd to be accepted, much less acceptable.
My response to the question of a final judgment is that God had better have some damn good excuses for His conduct before He questions mine. “Judge not, lest you be judged.” Get real, if He had done His job, our jobs wouldn’t have been necessary.
My standard for the death penalty is hard scientific evidence, not a coerced confession, not eyewitness testimony, but DNA, fingerprints, fibers, surveillance video, blood stains, etc. that can be independently verified and prove the case beyond any doubt.
I agree completely.
There was one mission I was tasked to eliminate someone, and I refused. Simply because all the proof of his *guilt* was in my view suspect. I think I’ve mentioned this before. I wasn’t just some sanctioned killer. I know they got someone else to complete the mission. But I will always believe I did the right thing. And I’ve paid the price. The powers that be don’t forget soldiers who refuse orders, even if legally allowed to do so under certain conditions. *shrug* Too many people are OK with ambiguities. I am not. “No good deed goes unpunished”, right? 🙂
I study history whenever I can, as you know. 🙂 I came across a document by a Jewish History Professor on Concentration Camps during the Holocaust.
He discovered a phrase carved into a cell wall by a Jewish prisoner that read: “If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness.” From the document:
Holocaust Haggadah – Efficacy of Prayer -The Greatest Fraud: Words carved into the cell wall of a Jewish prisoner during the Holocaust.
“The murder of at least one million children under the age of 13 in the Holocaust —no matter what the reasons— makes God responsible for murder.”
— History professor Yehuda Bauer.
I couldn’t agree more.
All of those ‘wedding parties’ that have been attacked are probably the result of intel based on settling old scores that have nothing to do with terrorism or threats to the US. Half of the people hauled to Guantanamo had no connection to terrorists, but were accused by people who wanted the reward money or had personal grudges to settle. Hell, even in law enforcement you want to know the reason someone is giving you information, and their relationship to the people implicated. Getting good intelligence isn’t easy or there wouldn’t be all of these disasters.
There is nothing worse than putting up with the pronouncements of the fundies giving God a pass on some disaster or another. If He is all-knowing and all-powerful, then it’s His fault, and no moron with a Book is going to convince me otherwise. How reliable can someone be who gambles with Satan [see Book of Job]?