The site www.nobeliefs.com/beliefs.htm
argues that belief in anything is harmful and unnecessary. It recognises that once you start believing
you must also hold that no other belief should be tolerated. What you are doing then is vowing to treat
reality as if you are not wrong which signifies intolerance towards any
contrary viewpoint which is exactly the same thing as being intolerant to those
who disagree with you. It says instead
of believing in stuff you should only think that it is true for thinking that
something is true is less strong than belief and is more open-minded. The site argues that belief is to blame for
religious terrorism. Yes, religion is to
blame for all the evil worked in its name and in the name of its Jehovah for it
should be presenting its theology not as fact but as a hypothesis that is
useful and which can be abandoned if it proves bad for us or untenable. Religious faith is a severe attack on human
rights.
I have this to say. Opinion which
is a weak form of belief is intolerant too but not to the extent of stronger
opinion which we call belief and which faith is based on. The Christian faith demands a strong faith in
Jesus and obeying him even when we are going to come off the worst. For example, the Church prefers a gay man to
endure a lifetime of depression and loneliness than for him to have a
relationship with a decent bloke. The
nice thing about opinion is that you want to change it if you get further
light.
The reason religion thrives is because people develop an emotional
attachment to it and their feelings get biased towards supporting it at least
to some extent and passing on the conditioning to their children. Many religions are very crafty and make sure
that this undue development happens.
Therefore their clergy and parents have a lot to answer for when anybody
they have religiously influenced commits a religiously motivated crime. Religion kills because religion needs to
condition people to survive and to grow.
You only kill because you have been conditioned by outside influences
and nature to do it. Anybody or anything
that exercises an undue conditioning influence on you is the cause of what evil
you will do as much as you are. We all
know that we don’t do evil without bad influence so religion KNOWINGLY does
this harm. The religions might pretend
to themselves that they do not but they wouldn’t need to pretend unless they
already knew.
Examples of how easily people have been conditioned follow.
The murderous revulsion for Jack the Ripper though his crimes are nothing
compared to Tony Blair and President Bush as exemplified in the war with
The guilt people feel about sex.
The way people look at extreme and vulgar violence on the television and
accept it and there is an uproar if hardcore sex is shown. The way they don’t mind exposing their kids
to the violence.
The way people are conditioned to marry though marriage is really about being
insecure and afraid and trying to keep somebody tied to you for life. If you really valued your partner above all
you wouldn’t need marriage. Marriage would
insult your love by saying that the rite is more important than the binding
power of love. You marry without caring
if the lucky partner will make you less happy than somebody else could. You also don’t mind if your partner could be
better off with somebody else.
The way people are conditioned to believe in God and Jesus. Why these and nothing else? Every single religious activity and doctrine
contains the marks of conditioning for it degrades human beings and promotes
the agenda of exploiters in religion.
The way people are uncomfortable with people who are different, for
example, black people and gay people.
Nearly everything in my writings is a criticism of the errors people have
been led into by the Church and by the law of the land and by society. We are all conditioned to a huge extent –
more than we will ever know.
The way the law has not tried to make the Church stop causing terrorism
and holy wars. One important way to do
this would be to enforce it to drop sectarian doctrines like “The Roman
Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ”, and “Jesus is the Only Way to God”, and “The
Eucharist when celebrated by a validly ordained priest alone is the body and
blood of God”, and “The Bible is the only inspired word of God we have”. These doctrines insult and command
opposition to other Churches. The Roman
Catholic Church is boasting that it can be more sure of itself than other
Churches can be of themselves. That
provocative claim makes its sweetness towards them to be pretty
superficial. To teach that Jesus is the
only way to God is to claim they know better than anybody who says some other
god, perhaps Krishna, is the only way to God and it also claims that if the
real saviour is somebody else they are not going to try and find out for they
have found the only way to God – madness!.
It is a beacon to sectarianism.
There are many groups today that claim that they can change food and
drink into God and a different God than Jesus at that. The Church of Rome will command that
Catholics protect the Eucharist against sacrilege with their lives but they
won’t do that for the Eucharist of the pagans. That shows just how dangerous
religion is for one religion’s good is another religion’s evil and we have
enough to be divided among ourselves about.
Sectarianism is basically claiming to have a monopoly on spiritual truth
and how to bring God to people that will maximise their chances of becoming
holy. Only force can cause change and it
needs to be done for the Church will never change.
The State should have the Church adopt a more Buddhist approach and use a
Christian version of this logic, “I am not saying my Buddhist faith is right or
wrong but I am saying it is right for me and works for me and it might work for
you do”. That takes the nastiness and
the arrogance out of the whole affair by putting what is best for people first
and not what is best for the Bible God, Jesus and the pope and the Church
system of dogma first. Humanists and
Atheists should be deploying the same logic as the Buddhist.
It is impossible to be impressed by religious faith when it makes harmful
claims and the virtue of most of the teachers of religion is not
impressive. Any help they give is hoped
to draw people to the “light” of their gospel so the motivation is disgraceful. Those that command us in the name of God
whose place they say they take to look after the sick and do other hard and
painful things in the name of Jesus Christ should be doing more
themselves.
Belief is not necessary. Opinion is
better for it is less arrogant. If Catholics
only had the opinion that Catholicism was true and Muslims only had the opinion
that Islam was true there would have been less bloodshed between them.