Aug 04, 2008 16:05
DO I care what religion you do or do not practice?
No.
I DO care when religious groups (ANY GROUP) purposefully flood the world with scare tactics, misinformation and downright lies just so they can delude their followers...
Yes, very much so.
I care for people and I do not like to see them bullied, lied to, mislead or otherwise "told" things that just are not true for the sole purpose of making them blind to knowledge and afraid to ask question that advance human society as a whole.
Blind Faith, Blind Trust, blind ANYTHING is stagnant and oppressive and I don't like to see people willing have blinders put on their brains.
We'd still be in the Dark Ages if organized religions and zealot dogma were not questioned. The earth would be still be flat and your television and computer non-existent.
We'd still be like groups like the Taliban, IRA, The Spanish Inquisition, the Holy Crusades and any other "group" killing in the name of their beliefs.
Every organized religion is guilty of this at one time or another throughout human history.
Anyone who thinks differently needs to step out of church for a day and into a Library into the History section...
I think Galileo Galilei said it best:
"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." ibid., p. 226
Thomas Jefferson I believe however, expanded the above quote quite eloquently, here are some of my favorite quotes:
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus told us indeed that 'God is a spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an ethereal gas; but still matter." letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites." Notes on Virginia
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes" Letter to von Humboldt, 1813
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" Letter to H. Spafford, 1814
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." in a letter to S. Kercheval, 1810
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,' which was rejected 'By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'" From Jefferson's biography
To me, anyone trying to force you to believe something contrary to what is proven fact (After exhaustive study, peer review and criticism) is a snake oil salesman. There is no such thing as a "Magical Cure-All by Blind Faith"... but you have the means of striving to make a real "Cure-All" one day in the very real sense.... God already gave it to you... your BRAIN.
Science strives every day to find that cure, scientists, teachers, historians, every day people are capable of using the greatest gift given to us...
Please, use it. That is all, my religious ranting is over for today.
religion