Re: Elderly Christian woman paraded naked through streets of Egypt by armed muslim mo
John Lennon did say that organised religion was the worst thing to happen to humanity. To build on that, it's not the religions themselves, but rather the followers. Religion tends to be used as an easy justification for bigotry, hatred and a range of other nasty behaviours - I mean, the easiest argument to justify bad behaviour is "God says it's ok". Religion is very much the opium of the masses and it tends to attract the poor, uneducated, obsessive and other vulnerable elements in society who completely misuse and misinterpret the message. Muslims (NOT Islam) are unfortunately the biggest offenders, but I think that can be traced back to serious issues in the Arab world and the arrested development of those societies.
There isn't much I dispute about that. In fact even Jesus hates religion, and most people would agree that man-made religion is false and frankly stupid. In the eyes of the non-religious, every religious is seen as made up, in the eyes of specific religious people, their religion is true, and others are false; and still others, everyone is right (but wrong? think about it). God > religion, any-day.
Christianity is not that much better and whilst it has improved over the years, it is still an offender. A quick look at Christian Evangelism in the US reveals an ugly picture. Having received 15 years of Christian education, I'm mystified as to how these people justify their bigoted and distorted beliefs under Christianity. The Christian Right pursues a range of positions and policies which cannot be considered Christian in any way (namely, the Death Penalty, social welfare and LGBT discrimination).
Evangelism is really a mess of inconsistency in US. I agree on that one.
Of course people, would view certain positions on certain issues as bigoted or homophobic, within Christianity; the question of whether they actually are, same goes for any (I hate using the word conservative or traditional or "fundamental"), understanding of things like marriage, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia. The "Christian right" is sometimes completely wrong, but it is hard to tell when the media loves painting things a certain colour also, so I would take most things with a little grain of salt.
I find it interesting that the non-religious or semi-churched have the audacity to claim that this is what this religion should be. Maybe it is discussion for one of the other threads. We all do it though. I agree on two things, firstly giving someone a bad rap because they hold to a different understanding of marriage, respectfully (unlike some who don't obviously); or any "social justice" issue, and calling it discrimination? That has been left to another thread already. It is the age of entitlement in some respects; but some how the sound discussion of ideas, no offence OP, is thrown out the window.
I understand there is failing to see how certain Christian understandings of certain issues for instance are consistent with the picture of Jesus that some may have. But that is a discussion for another thread. Be careful not to do what some people do, is pull the 'well I cannot be bothered addressing this issue within tenets of Islam, so I bring up all the cases of "Christian" extremism'. It is not a strong case, all one has to do is pull up all cases of non-religious, ideological (even non-religious, atheistic influenced ones). Each religion has to deal with its own issues, Christianity is not excluded, but neither is Islam, or even the non-religious exempt.
My point is, it isn't the religions themselves, but rather the nature of belief and the adherents who really give religion a bad name. Religion in the hands of the poor and uneducated is a dangerous thing, but unfortunately, religion primarily attracts these people (herein lies the problem).
Depends on the nature of religion and belief, lets not paint all things with a broad brush if we can help it. I agree there is no need to generalise and all that, but the statistics are troubling when you look at the numbers. Any ideaology, theistic or atheistic (using a more relaxed concept of a religion/ideology) in the hands of anyone, the rich, the poor. While education can help, it can also hinder. A secular education is hardly neutral, even though it ideally should be somewhat, even if you were to remove some of its more contested bits such as religious education, or sexual ethics; there seems to be a growing bias within the secondary (and primary) education system, and it actually stems out simply from the way education is educated at university I think => meaning that whatever young people of our generation want, ends up impacting the next.