Religious Moderates? Or Religious Hypocrites?
Liberal religionists tend to believe that there is no punishing God.
This means one that does not care what you do but about how you feel. Or
it can mean one who is so merciful that he lets you get away scot-free.
God does not make a person pay for their sins in this view. So God only wants do to nice
things for you and charm you as if the people you leave bleeding through
stepping on them don't matter. Many of the liberals believe that if you
commit the sin of being a drug addict, God will not send you anything to harm
you but will simply stand by and let you suffer the consequences of your
actions. They deny that this is punishment. But their God is not a God of
justice. Deterring people from evil is fair but is not what justice is all
about. Justice is about treating a person according to whether they have done
good or evil on purpose. Punishment ties in with the idea that you must reward a
person according to their works. If they do bad you give them bad. To hurt them
to deter them from crime or to reform them is not punishing them. A truly just
God will have to punish because if he doesn’t he is guilty of declaring that it
really doesn’t matter if you are a good person or a bad one.
Moderate religion is ridden with disagreement about doctrine and practice and
about ethics. It is plainly man-made for that very reason. It is fundamentalist
for any man-made faith to act as if it has authority from God.
Every liberal religion has its “lunatic fringe.“ It tolerates it. Thus it is
responsible. Religion is not needed as a social structure. We can get community
without religion and pray in the house. An unnecessary system with a lunatic
fringe is to blame for that lunatic fringe despite the hypocrisy that may drive
it to condemn it.
The argument that when a religion or members of a religion do evil that the
religious faith must not necessarily be blamed is incorrect. The argument says
that when a religion supports harmful acts and its members commit these acts
that is a mistake to think that the religious beliefs are mainly or partly to
blame for the actions. But much religion does command harm. It is fundamentalist
dishonesty to deny that.
Moderate religion is really treating religion as man’s word not God’s so it is
not about religion so much as exploitation. Even if we are conditioned by
religion or brainwashed, we are still responsible for letting ourselves be
exploited this way. We will know it deep down.
Moderate religion gives tacit approval for causing division. Instead of us all
accepting one another as people the liberal has to separate from those who are
made of sterner stuff and who insist the religion is to be followed and not
watered down.
Moderate religion is based on irrational thinking and feelings just as much as
religions that espouse terrorism are. Just because one religion does not teach
that we must kill members of other faiths does not mean it is any better than
one that does.
Moderate religion places obligations on its members even if it just to order
them to go to Church at Christmas and Easter. Morality is full of problems. That
is why it is essential that people be given the information they need to make
their own moral choices be it some kind of utilitarianism or whatever.
Religion for the vast majority of followers is more about engaging in sacred
rituals and being part of a religious community than about belief. Even if
somebody reads their Bible and concludes that if we feel God is asking us to
sacrifice our family and kill them we should do it they will not.
Most people who are members of religion tend to be uncomfortable or disapproving
of those who are more religious than they are and/or members of other religions.
They have suspicions about very religious people and people outside their
religion. That shows how they feel about their own deep down. They do not really
think it’s a good thing.
Moderate religion gives us rules we don’t really need. It results in believers
thinking they should do silly things such as baptise their children or hang up
holy pictures.
Even unbelievers and secularists may believe or want to believe strange things.
Perhaps the secularist could insist on abortion on demand even up to birth. If
rational people sometimes give in to the most dangerous and hideous ideas and
promote them, how much more are we to fear irrational people who follow liberal
or fundamentalist religion? For the secularist, knowing things the mundane and
earthly way is what matters. Believers in God agree up to a point but say that
you also need God to tell you things in your heart. That is dangerous for the
information from "God" may be contradicted by information from "God" in the
future and is making a God out of your imagination.
The liberal who says love your neighbour as yourself does not realise that he is
being a fundamentalist. You can do a lot of good for your neighbour while loving
yourself more than anybody. The liberal forgets how much of his morality is
based on the idea: “God says it. He must be obeyed whatever we think about his
commandments.”
Liberals and fundamentalist Christians say that people need a right relationship
with God otherwise their human relationships will be very faulty. They have a
little ditto: “The love of God and your neighbour go together.” This is
fanaticism for it is calling atheists who have successful relationships liars.
Most psychologists will tell you that you must depend on yourself to be happy in
life and not on God or other people. When you are outgoing is is all your work
in the sense that it is you who has to make others drawn to you. So liberals are
fundamentalists for they seek to inflict faith in God on you and obscure your
vision.
Liberals are often people who just water down and lie about their religion’s
dark side. They are really disobedient. They only seem to be helping but they
are not. Disobedience to a religion is really saying, “The religion has such and
such a standard but I will not obey.” The disobedient person of faith is as much
a supporter of an evil faith as the obedient.
The disobedient only look like rebels or people who won’t face the truth. They
cannot be taken seriously. They should find or form a system - even if it is
religious - that suits themselves and in which they can be their true selves.
You are not a true believing member of a religion if you cherry-pick the
teachings that are essential or follow from the essentials. A religion cannot
function if it permits you to do that. Again cherry picking makes you look like
a reel and a hypocrite. People should actually be attracted to the teachings
through the antics of the cherrypicker. The hypocrisy may provoke a desire in
the witnesses of that hypocrisy to be sincere.
Religion as a community can only be as dysfunctional as society is. For example,
a violent society produces violent religions. Religion is a great even then for
it may argue that its evil has divine approval.
A default is the position that should be automatically taken by a person who
hasn’t decided what position to take. Moderate and liberal religion denies the
default doctrine that atheism must be assumed to be true until shown otherwise.
Thus it is fundamentalist in that sense - it is obscurantist and intolerant.
Is it wise to encourage belief in God when most believers adhere to dangerous
religion based on God? Not if there is a strong chance that belief in God will
lead them to facilitate such religion or join it. God is that by definition must
be put before all things - that is behind moderate religion and extreme
religion. They have that in common. Thus the belief is intrinsically extremist
and it is only luck that stops that extremism from breaking out all the time.
Prayer has to put God’s will first in order to be acceptable to him. If it
doesn’t it is blasphemous. But we know that people matter not religion or God
which means prayer, if it is morally acceptable, is only acceptable if it is
human-centred.
Prayer is always a fundamentalist activity. The praying person is urged to see
that prayer works which really means that the person is being asked to remember
the times it seemed to work and to forget the times it didn’t or to pretend that
it. Prayer is training in fundamentalism. It is its bedrock.
A person cannot win with prayer. If it is devotion to God, it is fanaticism or
putting faith before people. If it is not, it is an attempt to fool a God and to
expect help from him when you don’t respect him. Either is essential fanaticism.
Religious liberalism says it forbids fanaticism. Is that why it endorses prayer
which is seen as based on a feel good kind of attitude. But it is fanatical to try
and expect people to please God with prayers that they only say to feel good.
It is insulting a God who may punish so it is fanatical. It is fanaticism to invite
punishment.
Moderate religion has no right to criticise its members if they become a bit
extreme or very extreme. It does the same thing itself so it is in no position
to forbid or criticise. Thus it indirectly sanctions such crimes.
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