FAITH IS BEHIND VIOLENCE, CHRISTIAN FAITH DOES THIS IN A UNIQUE AND ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS WAY
Faith can be simplistically defined as confident trust in God and what he has supposedly revealed. It is a gift and challenges to it are seen as God granting the gift of a test. Their argument is it is up to God to test faith not us for he knows if the test can make us better servants.
In fact aware or not, the testing does come from people.
The Church's definition of faith tries to over-simplify. It tries to make it shout loudest over the other bigger and equally important faith you have. Or to be exact there is never faith but faiths. All are different and all overlap. Faith in God wants to be seen at the expense of the other forms of faith you have. Take Jesus Christ. He ranted about the importance of God and faith in him mattering above all. Yet it was the faith that he would survive the day, ie faith in others, that got him out to the people daily. It was the faith that the food he got would keep him strong enough to preach that got him to open his mouth. It was the faith that the wives and children of the hated Jews and of course the men who loved them would suffer as a result that made him use incite violence in Matthew 23. In short, there is no faith but faiths and faith in God is all we hear about. Yet it is not the biggest and most important faith they have. And even if it were, the Bible - for once it is fair - would see saying that your faith is that dedicated that as vainglory and boasting. Jesus himself challenged those who said they had faith such as the rich young man even though it meant him walking away. The rich man loved his faith but Jesus said it was bad spirituality. He did not run after him to apologise for hurting his feelings as we would today. Jesus said that even if you do all you are supposed to you are to say you are a worthless servant. Paul wrote that we are saved and God gives us this as a gift and it has nothing to do with good works for otherwise we will boast. The logic is that sin is very crafty and can fool the sinner so it is important not to boast.
It is thus fundamentally dishonest to look only at faith in God and ignore how it connects to the other faiths it is tied to and which it depends on. For example, you have faith in the greedy war you are going to start. Your faith in God is part of the problem even if it should not be. Whether there is a God to approve or not, we have to admit that faith is not all good.
Back to faith in God. Even the Church says it can be a struggle. It can suffer a lot of confusion. You are affirmed as faithful if you think you have faith. The Church says it will always give the benefit of the doubt. It has to and nobody can see faith. And that is even when we suspect that faith is a word that covers confusion or imagined belief. What the Church won't admit is that it then caters for those who think their leanings to fight for religion might come from God. And what about those who sit on the fence while violent scriptures are read to them as if God approves of the evil? And what about those who say nothing while their faith causes trouble?
The Church teaches that doubt is not the opposite of faith. A person with grave doubts only has them because they still have faith. It teaches that it is just deliberately trying to doubt or rejecting faith that is against faith. So unbelief or being faithless is the opposite of faith not doubt. This clearly means that a person who has faith and doubts that God does not want him to kill the sinners down the road is claimed as a Christian and a person of faith albeit perhaps misguided faith.
Religion says that the ego, regarding yourself as having more value than others do, is behind all evil. But it is behind faith. You have to have faith in yourself that you have faith in God. That is the platform - your self-faith. That is the faith behind faith and that is the faith that comes first to you. So it is a product of the ego.
Faith is bad for it can be the key to violence so easily. It is also bad for it often is the key.
The key opens a lot of Pandora's boxes.
How?
By not encouraging or helping people to care about religious truth. For example, Catholics have mostly history based doctrines that are controversial and children are carted to the baptism font without their parents being allowed to make an informed decision. Religion is not based on suitable evidence which is why holy books with evil rules and good rules will cause people to do harm ideas and doctrines become very flexible when there is no evidence to help you interpret them. They are still forcing you to consider an evil interpretation and maybe follow it. Even the Quakers as peaceful as they are are giving you that choice by giving you the Bible.
By insinuating that even if faith inspired violence is forbidden, it is not that evil as God has commanded it in the past. Some Christian and Muslim groups are fond of bloodletting. If they are behaving contrary to the Christian or Muslim religion, the fact remains that the God speaking in the Old Testament and the Koran and Muslim tradition authorises violence. That leads to the sects thinking, "Okay let us endorse and dish out this violence. If we are wrong, it is not that big of a deal for violence is endorsed by God in the scriptures anyway." And it does not matter if the sect is authentically Christian/Muslim or not.
What matters is that it claims to be a religion and we should take it at its word. Is the religious attitude the problem? Is religion the problem? Is the sect merely a symptom of what religion does to people's heads? Does "good" religion pose a risk? Is it luck or forces external to the religion that we have to thank when nothing has happened?
By teaching that other religions are the enemy. Religion often says it only
intends to over people a uplifting message of divine love and does not intend to
offend or down other religions. But what is claimed to be the best in terms of
spirituality or morals or doctrine by default does down other systems. Moreover,
if you are Christian and you think you have the only true religion, you will
feel that God is on your side as you wage war against another religion,
especially one that is nearly completely different. The Christian Church teaches
that war is only fair if you feel and think God approves!
By teaching that evil is good that is not good enough. The Church has always
taught that evil is a lack - evil is good but not as good as it can be. The
Church says that evil is not real and that is the basic reason why you can
believe in an all-good and all-powerful God though terrible evil exists. The
downside of the doctrine is that evil so often can easily pass for good or good
can easily pass for evil. How can you trust yourself or anybody else in
difficult situations such as when the question arises, "Do we need to declare
war and would it be for the best?" The doctrine easily leads to evil warmongers
passing themselves off as tortured saints.
By teaching that God has the right to take responsibility for violence by
letting it take place thus if God commands violence we must obey for he knows
best and he uses evil to bring good out of it. All who have engaged in holy war
have believed this. Though God can be used as an excuse for war, it is plain
that the God concept in itself implies that war for God might be necessary. God
is by definition the power that turns evil around and who uses evil to make us
better people. Now atheists can fight harder and be more keen on blood letting
if they think or feel the war they wage will result in much good. They tell
themselves that their goals and intentions are good and that spurs them on to
greater evil doing and cruelty. If atheists can be like that, the risk is
greater that a religious person will think or feel they are doing good by waging
war than an atheist will. The reason is that the religious person feels God
approves and blesses and accompanies him. So faith in God can lead to
warmongering easier than atheism would and can lead to warmongering that
surpasses atheist warmongering in brutality.
By teaching that as humankind is corrupt and prone to error and godlessness we
must fight for God to safeguard the truth.
By teaching that the Holy Spirit live inside you and guides you to interpret
the Bible. This means what you think the Holy Spirit comes first even if it is
not the Holy Spirit or even if there is no Holy Spirit. And what if there is a
Holy Spirit and he is not in you at all? This doctrine that one is one's own
prophet makes a hypocrite of you if you claim that you follow only the Bible. As
the Bible God does endorse violence, private interpretation and the hypocrisy
and lies it involves can lead to you thinking you should wage war for God.
President Bush did that! Innocent lives in Iraq were lost as a result. The Koran
does not claim that God must live in you to help you interpret the book. It
leaves you to decide your own interpretation. That means the Muslim of peace has
no right to criticise the Muslim who endorses a bloodthirsty interpretation. The
moderate Muslims are enablers by principle whether they mean to be or not.
By teaching that evil godless nations deserve destruction for they only draw
their citizens into everlasting suffering in Hell, the place of eternal
punishment for sin. The Bible God threatened Israel with retribution if it
failed to keep all his commands which included the law that certain sinners such
as heretics and false prophets and fortune tellers and homosexuals must be
tortured to death by stoning. Jesus demanded devotion to the Bible's version of
God and claimed to be his only Son. He claimed that those who sin risk eternal
torture in Hell forever. Christians say that the torture there is self-inflicted
but not a word of the Bible so much as hints at that. It is God's torture
chamber for the Bible clearly teaches that God is okay with torture as long as
you act on his orders.
By advocating an all-pervading religious attitude - religion is bad because of
the religious attitude. Religion is meant to be something not that you do for a
few hours a week but is about your whole life 24/7. Religion is essentially a
collection of people united by their religious attitude and that attitude is to
direct all they do so all they do is religious not just the stuff that is
obviously religious. For example, for a Calvinist Christian, being industrious
down at the power plant is as much religion as is singing a hymn on Sunday in
Church. A religious attitude is the treatment of any leader or book or whatever
as infallible or to be obeyed without murmur in the major issues - it is
superstition though it may not look like it. It is a mistake then to argue that
if religious people are poor and then resort to terrorism to get more rights or
to protest that this is about poverty not religion. Hitler should be seen as a
religious leader though he may have looked like a secular one. He said he had
faith and that is enough to prove that his heart was not secular and his secular
actions were not really secular.
By teaching that you must follow your conscience even if it is mistaken for you have to follow the best light you have. William Lane Craig wrote, "To say...that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right". Christians like Craig then won't admit it but they would agree that it is objectively wrong to make people disobey their erring consciences and it is also objectively wrong for the Nazis to do what they did. So it follows that if you stop the Nazis you consider this regrettable for it is interfering with their consciences.
By teaching that if your conscience objects to the following that you must suppress it. "To say God let the holocaust happen for the sake of teaching us what evil can do and that we must learn to prevent it is as bad as saying that a God may find your keys for you but let millions die like that. It seems trivial to ask God to get the keys when he is not stopping the holocaust.
There is no real goodness in a
person or society that thinks evil is allowed to happen so that they
may be more compassionate or whatever."
By letting members do evil things and exercise hateful propaganda. An excellent example hails from Hitler's speech, April 12, 1922. Hitler referred to Jesus as his Lord and Saviour and spoke of how Jesus seized the scourge to put the Jews out of the Temple and became an example of how to deal with Jewish poison. The Church never debunked this speech or warned Hitler. It did not even condemn his evil book, Mein Kamph. Harmless books ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books but this one did not. The Church did nothing as he rose to power. Hitler was never excommunicated. People may tell themselves that Hitler was misusing Christ. We have no reason to think Hitler was only using Jesus for political ends - what if he really believed his own speech? It shows the danger of belief in Christianity. And Hitler did get considerable religious and political support from the Churches.
Some of these things apply to most religions. Some apply to all. Even one of those is a serious matter and enough to justify slamming the religion.
APPENDIX: CATHOLIC JOHN WATERS' HYPOCRISY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY
When Christianity points to the violence in its Bible to get people to kill and maim and wage crusades liberals say, "Christianity is all good and those atrocities have nothing to do with Christianity." Christians like them for saying that. But the likes of Waters never returns the favour to say, "Though most abusers are homosexuals homosexuality in itself is good and those homosexuals are no reflection on it. What happened has nothing to do with homosexuality." No he is so vile he would rather blame homosexuality instead of a manmade faith that has no magic or even natural power to improve human nature in any special way. He does not realise that homosexuality can only happen between adults. An adult and a person who is too young for sex is a different matter. The priests will enable his lies and vitriol by giving him communion on Sunday.
