One of my articles on News24 caused some of my family members to "unfriend" me on Facebook. One of the more fanatical members of the clan asked all his 'brothers and sisters in Christ' not to interact with me. I find this very sad, but also typical of most religious people. Intolerance of others' point of view seems to be the norm.
Apparently the term 'religidiots' that I used on one of my posts infuriated the righteous and the fanatical.
I am here to apologise for using that term: not all religious people are idiots. This is not what I meant by the term. Maybe what I should have said was, "some religious people have idiotic beliefs".
There, I've apologised, but let's look at some of the more idiotic beliefs prevalant in the different religious communities. The only one that I have some knowledge of is the Christian belief system, you know, the one where you have to be born again in Christ in order to avoid eternal flames in hell.
1. The most dangerous and pervasive belief is that your particular religion is the only one that will ensure your place in heaven. (To believe in a heaven is in my opinion also idiotic, but we won't go there for the moment). Most religious people ignore the question when I ask: "If your parents and teachers had been Muslim, or Catholic, or Hindu, or Shinto, or any of the thousands of different religious sects presently active in the world, would you still have believed in the particular type of belief-system you adhere to presently?"
I think it is obvious that you would have followed by-and-large what your parents, siblings and teachers taught you when you were growing up. So, shock, horror, you might have been a Catholic or even a Muslim and by your present idiotic belief system, would have gone to Hell rather than heaven.
I once asked one of my religious family members what happens to all the billions of people who lived before Christ or have never heard of him. Surely it would seem a tad unfair to condemn all those people to eternal damnation simply because they haven't heard of this god
who cloned himself to save the people he created, from sins he himself presumably created, by letting himself be killed. Her answer was,"these people have a special dispensation: they will automatically go to heaven because they hadn't heard of Christ!" My obvious remark was: "So, it seems to me, that it is hellishly dangerous for anybody on earth to hear about Jesus. Because if you don't believe in the story, you are sure as Hell going to be condemned. Much safer, it seems to me, not to hear about him!" There was obviously no answer to that remark.
2. Then there is the idiotic belief that god created the universe in 6 days about 6000 years ago. When you ask, "What about the dinosaurs?", they say that they were also created at the same time. Presumably Noah found room for them on the overloaded ark as well? When you ask the question ,"How on earth was it possible to create night and day and afterwards create the sun?" they do some real mental gymnastics and say the earth was at first covered with a dark cloud so the sun was not visible yet. This must surely rank as one of the most idiotic assertions yet?
The belief in creationism has undergone evolution in recent years due to the pressure of new scientific knowledge. So now the six days are modified and have evolved into the assertion that the six days referred to in the bible are actually six periods of time. Each period could have lasted billions of years.This is a typical creationist trick. If the stories in the bible don't fit the facts, bend the stories to fit the facts.
3. Another idiotic story is the one about our alleged ancestors Adam and Eve. When confronted with the obvious fairy story of how Adam was made out of some saliva and dust and Eve was fashioned out of Adam's rib after god couldn't find a suitable companion for Adam amongst the animals, the creationists say that it is an allegorical story not to be taken literally.This is another trick creationists use to try and explain the nonsensical stories in the bible: it was meant as a story to explain creation to illiterate peasants or told as a parable. When asked which parts of the bible should then be taken as the literal truth, they usually go silent or go over to attacking you as a person. (Ignore him my brothers and sisters in Christ)
There are many other idiotic stories more or less believed by religionists of all kinds, but I think I have made my point.
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