Part One.
This might be a bit of a ramble, so I beg forgiveness up front. I want to address one of the major questions that doesn’t seemed to be tackled head on.
And if it has been tackled then you’ll have to forgive me for that as well . I’m not twenty five any more and if I have to think twice where I left my teeth… well, you get the picture?
Let me start by saying I like religious extremists. I don’t mean I’d like to shag one or even that I would want them anywhere near me, but rather I like them because you know where they stand. Hopefully way over there.
And by like I mean appreciate inasmuch as they tend not mince words.
For example, remember the catch phrase of Ahmed the terrorist, the ventriloquist doll?
“I kill you! “
Straight to the point. Again, you know where you stand with someone like this. Or you should know if you have any commonsense. Again, a long way from wherever he is standing.
It’s reckoned that around 15% of Muslims are extremist. Let’s scale that down to 10%. Easier for me to do the math
And let’s say there are 1billion Muslims on the planet. I know there are more, and more are created every day, but as I mentioned, I like it when the math is easy.
So 10% of a billion is… 100 million.
That’s an awful lot of real life ventriloquist dolls out there Hell Bent on sending you to…. well, Hell.
I got a bit side-tracked.
We are fortunate that, while most Christians are convinced all non-believers are going to Hell, and may even wish for your early demise, fair dos to them that for all intent and purpose most don’t seem so overtly Hell Bent on sending you there before their god calls you. Of course, many of them could be praying like crazy for their god to pick up the metaphorical phone in an attempt to chivvy him… sorry, ‘Him’ along a little.
But if there is one thing all you deconverts have learned it is that Yahweh will not be moved by anguished pleas from the devoted. God will only make a movement when he is good and ready. Just like your constipated Grandad who won’t get off the toilet and you have to leg it to the back garden to take a whizz behind the shed.
In the meantime you will just have to deal with your lost car keys or your neighbour the vegan who, like all vegans is obviously a Satanist and pedo, by yourself, or with the entire congregation of your church. Even if this, means using the bedsheets and paying him a visit after bible study and the exorcism of unmarried Aunt Mildred who is a secret player of Dungeons and Dragons and a subscriber to an internet porn site.
And here we encounter another aspect of the problem. All these extremists believe the way they do because their god wrote it in a book. Oh, yes he did!
God sanctioned slavery, burn witches and Democrats, throw gays from tall buildings and chop up live animals because it’s a holy day.
But when you ask about what’s in their books and what it means the problems start to mount up, as this is where we often encounter the burbling, confused sounding, glazed over expression of the non-extremists, and then …. shudder… The Apologist.
I’ll do part deux a bit later….
Ark.
A Tale Unfolds 
The problem you raise isn’t really ‘religion’ per se; it’s religious belief.
Some people act on whatever the religious belief might be. Some don’t. Sometimes the specific religious belief has good results. Sometimes it does not. So highlighting the religious aspect doesn’t quite get to the root problem we find in what we call ‘extremist’ behaviour: it’s the kind of belief fueling the extremism that matters and not the topical descriptor of that belief (in this case, religious). Put aside the specific descriptor and look at what produces extreme beliefs. That’s the problem: too many of us not addressing what causes or permits or enhances or promotes extremist beliefs.
When all the topical bullshit is pared away from extremism, we are left with faith-based beliefs that are unquestionably strongly held but are immune to reason or evidence or reality itself. Such faith-based beliefs are the problem and they are plentiful (and multiply) in ideologies protected by so many deeply misguided people assuming the topical descriptor is what makes the kind of faith-based belief – and the tsk tsked extremism (by apologists) it produces – worthy of such protection and (all too often) legal and social privilege.
Faith-based belief – no matter what the topical descriptor might be where it is allowed to flourish and be taken seriously, such as religion – is always poisonous and pernicious. Always. That is the root cause of extremism. But it is hardly contained only within the boundary of religion. We’re fooling ourselves to think so. Religious extremism is just one branch among many – scary as that potential harm caused by it may be.
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As I pointed out.. It’s in the holy books. God’s words.
The extremists point this out and Jeff tells us often: it’s the Qu’ran or else you infidel dogs.
That is easy to understand.
But it’s the non extremists where other problems lie and this is where the Apologist comes into his/, her own.
Part deux, Coming to a blog near you… very soon
Or as soon as I can finish work stuff, do poop patrol, organize stuff for dinner and make sure what time the Liverpool game is on tonight.
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As you point out, “faith-based beliefs” do not always revolve around religion. But for most folks, “faith” is part of life. We have “faith-based beliefs” every day of our lives that various and sundry things will turn out the way we hope/want.
Certainly these “faith-based beliefs” can become all-consuming for some (extremism), but to say that such beliefs are “always poisonous and pernicious” seems a bit extreme.
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Quite true, Nan… if we defined and contained ‘faith-based’ as something similar to ‘hope’ as you do. But I didn’t define it this way intentionally. Notice that I described the kind of faith needed for religious extremism to be “strongly held but are immune to reason or evidence or reality itself.” So calling this kind of faith as “always poisonous and pernicious” I think is not extreme at all (no matter what kind of ‘tone’ this statement may elicit in the minds and imagination of different readers) but perfectly reasonable and easily defensible in this context. And this is the sense Hitchens described in God Is Not Great: How Religions Poison Everything. How does one set a limit on (or even criticize) faith-based beliefs – or any harm they may produce when acted upon – when various scriptures themselves authorize the extremist kind as if commanded by some god that MUST be obeyed in order to be described as one of the ‘faithful’? That sure ain’t some equivalent version of ‘hope’.
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“We”?
Can you give an example of something you consider I hold as a faith based belief?
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You have a “faith-based belief” that your veggies are going to grow each season, yes? I have a “faith-based belief” that my car is going to start when I need to go to the store. My other-half has a “faith-based belief” that his camera will work when he’s focusing on that perfect shot.
Just because the word “faith” is included in the phrase does not necessarily mean it’s related to religion or ideals or principles. Sometimes we just trust (have faith) that things in life will go the way we want them to.
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In actual fact I expect that providing I have done everything I should my veggies will grow as they are supposed to.
Faith tends to suggest something magical or supernatural, a thing controlled by something other than nature.
This is why I NEVER use the word, because as soon as an atheist or non believer uses it in conversation with a god botherer he or she gets jumped on.
I trust in the process based on evidence.
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You suggest that … Faith tends to suggest something magical or supernatural, a thing controlled by something other than nature.
I think you see it this way because the word has been captured by the religious. At its core, it actually means: “confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept.” No mention of magic or supernatural.
But I do get your point. In conversations with “god botherers,” one must be circumspect on how they express themselves. 😎
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The religious have utilized the bait and switch or the motte and bailey linguistic tactic forever… keeping the word the same but utilizing two very different but related meanings. The definition you use is the common meaning that possesses a level of trust or confidence based on likelihood and/or knowledge. That is the definition those that possess its opposite meaning – strong and unshakable belief without proof or evidence ie the religious kind – love to hide behind in order to claim a false equivalency with confidence and trust based on reason, evidence, and reality. The same tactic is commonly used for all kinds of disruptive and divisive ideologies today and atheists worth their salt should recognize it use as the precursor for the con job being sold to the gullible.
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You want kill religion? Go after the the notion that faith-based beliefs of any kind have ANY virtue whatsoever. Get rid of the faith-based aspect, get rid of not just religion but a host of pernicious ideas and practices.
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You are forgiven.
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Is the “question” in part deux?
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Ark, I had a football teammate through part of my pro and semi-pro career who was a devout Christian missionary via soccer off the field or on the sidelines. We were good friends because his father was a professor at my seminary I was enrolled and studying. He was born in the U.S. but grew up in Brasil as a boy and teenager/young adult to his missionary parents, then returned to the States for his collegiate career then pro and semi-pro career. When he hung his boots up for good he and his wife did missionary work for many years in Portugal and parts of Europe. They might be still there. Don’t know.
I share all of this because he told me something very profound during one of his “fund raising” sabbaticals here in Texas—he was in Mansfield, TX, when I was still up in Carrollton, TX—and I had gone to visit him. He told me that he MUCH prefers to be amongst non-Believers, heathens, even less than honorable pagans because as you mention above, he knew precisely where they stood in their “sinful state” or unsaved state. But while having to tour multiple churches for a year for gifts, donations, etc, to return to Portugal, he admitted that he LOATHED talking to many church boards, staff, and members because he was never quite sure of their “faith” and their understanding of Jesus’, Paul’s, and the other apostles’ commission to them and to their church to help and DO the “spreading of the Good News” to all parts of the world. It sometimes infuriated him about their lack of passion and laziness. Maybe even if they were truly “born again.“
I totally related to his lament because it was exactly the same for me during my 12-years of hard, HARD work and service and obedience to the Greek New Testament commissions.
Need to pause here because as usual, I have many tasks and errands unfinished. However, I shall return! 🙂
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If you want to kill religion, you can only kill it’s effect on you. Everyone else gets to play their own game. For some people religion is a comfort food, for some it’s a tightrope act with wobbles in it. Making it to the other side (where ever that might be) is seen as a challenge and a prize.
And anything can be a religion, depending on your age and point of view; for some people trains are a religion, for others, it might be growing Dahlias or hybrid roses; for someone else, maybe their kids are their religion. And in thinking about it, religion is not necessarily a belief, as much as it is a way of life. You can believe in a loch ness monster, or a flat earth, or big foot. Those aren’t necessarily religions, but they are beliefs, and so unshakable because the only proof is in your head.
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Interesting, the usage of the words ‘faith’ and ‘religion’. Too often they are presumed interchangeable.
To me religion is simply big business. The business of selling, where different ‘brands’ of the same putative product (salvation) are known as ‘faiths’.
A church is simply a store, and it is a store run very much along business lines. Things get a little complex when you consider (say) the Christian ‘faith’, and then figure out the places held by the Catholic franchise, the Church Of England franchise, the Adventist franchise, the Mormons, and any/all of the others.
So where does (say) Islam fit in? Islam is competing to milk/sell the same God (concept) as the Christians, yes, but competing business-wise none the less. God, they say, is infinitely present (He is everywhere, at once) so what the hell difference does it make who sells Him? To Himself none at all, but folks kill for the monopoly right to sell. No?
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Haha! 😄 Ark, that reminds me of two past memories while at seminary & on staff at my church in Mississippi then later still married to my ex-wife, but a deconvert.
1) — I was approached so many times, whether explicitly or implied, by several women (single and married) at my church in Jackson, MS, that I lost count during my years there. Talk about perceived satanic evil behavior in your above sentence, I can SO vouch for that! Then…
2) — When I was still married to my ex-wife and attending (infrequently for me) her non-denominational church in Carrollton, TX, I was again flirted with and sexually approached by several/many(?) single, divorced, widowed, or married women in that church! Once she divorced me (yes, the “Christian” woman who had 4 or more affairs with other men without me knowing) a woman who was on staff at that church wanted a boy-toy, sex-toy in me! 😄 By that time in my deconversion I obliged her at least 8-10 times. I’m such hedonistic heathen! 😈
Bottom-line, sin and corrupt behavior by publicly self-proclaimed Christians is RAMPANT inside Deep South/Fringe South (TX) Christian churches. Period! For me personally, the actual count is everywhere I ever went during those 12-years of faith-following, then the 4-5 years after I deconverted. And that includes BOTH men and women inside a range of denominations and churches.
So really Ark, even the (American) Christians DON’T practice, in private or in an un-public but hidden way, what is CLEARLY in their Holy book. When the (below chart) percentages of religious believing Americans are scattered all over the place with their practice and behavior, not even their Holy Bible works or operates properly! The chart below is from a populous number of 333,271,411 and their affiliations in 2022.
Whether Christians and their apologists accept it or not, they are the MOST disorganized, disagreeing, disoriented, and dis-informed in exegesis and hermeneutics of their own Scriptures that exist in the world. That is why Christianity is and has been in SHARP decline around the world, particularly in the U.S.
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Again, why kill religion?
The desperate, the unthinking, the immature, the wishful … all need succour and refuge, no? Why deny the drowning man his straw?
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Because I get a tad upset thinking that one of them might strap c4 to one of their kids and blow up my favorite pub
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Gods forgive me—
—high spirits? (Ouch ….)
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High ON spirits maybe?
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As far as the word “faith” is concerned, I think it has been hijacked by the religions just as the word “gay” has been hijacked by alternative sexual orientated people.
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Agreed.
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You wanna kill religion? Don’t think the football fans will cotton to that idea.
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Empathy … they’ll warm to it when you kick their balls.
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