Warchief Annabella wrote:
I find it interesting how pedantic and simplistic people on this board get about religion, as if saying that if you aren't a fundamentalist, you are a hypocrite and then they talk about how much they hate fundamentalists b/c they take a literal, unscientific view. It's like people are looking for a straw man. No wonder every religious debate devolves into retardation.
The fact that this is the Asylum, and as such requires a certain amount of verbal assault and battery to be fun aside for a moment.....
The significance of religeous faith in modern society makes it a special case.
It is present in all areas of our lives and (to me anyway) reveals qualities of the obedience to authority that is demanded by those in positions of power, and so freely given by so many of us without questioning why we should give it.
When you take into account that religeous faith is based upon nothing more than old-fashioned superstition, then I feel obligated to point out the contradictions that arise.
This is the 21st century. And yet we allow huge parts of our lives to be dictated by 'superstition'. I'm not saying that people of faith are bad people. Some of the bestest people I've met around the world are as devout as you can get. But for the society to base its moral and behavioural codes and norms around a superstition is so far removed from an 'intellectual' way of living that it needs to be constantly challenged.
'Normality' is the opinion of the majority.
I do not want my 'normality' to be defined by people whose reality is defined by superstition. And I struggle to accept as valid, the PoV of any individual who will acknowledge the 'authority' of a superstition.
If they are prepared to acknowledge
that authority without question, then what else will they accept without question?? That Iraq possesed WMD's? That Iran is bent on destroying Israel? That the US is the 'Great Satan'?
Where does it end? I guess the answer to that is somewhere in the region of Varus.
As far as I know, no countries leaders are making decisions and basing their policies on the patterns made by the entrails of a freshly slaughtered goat. If they were, and we found out about it we would be rightly affronted by the idiocy of their behaviour. Yet we happily (some of us anyway) give obeisance to governments and leaders who allow their policy decisions to be influenced by sections of society whose belief system would be more at home in the company of the primitive beliefs of hunter-gatherer societies from 10,000 years ago.
I find that unacceptable, and will continue to rail against it.
Edited, Apr 8th 2009 12:43am by paulsol
Like I have any more respect for the way todays politics works, than I do for folk basing their behaviour around possible repurcussions/eternal rewards from supernatural beings......