Perhaps it is not insane to think that Muslim fundamentalists are savagely dangerous, while Christian fundamentalists are just good patriotic Americans, but it certainly is ignorant. And in many ways, ignorance is harder to deal with than ideology. People with an ideology have invested some thought into what they believe: ignorant people don't have to think. They just assert.
In Syria and Iraq today--but certainly not just there--profoundly religious zealots are engaging in brutal attacks on anybody who does not agree with them religiously. They believe they have the truth. They believe God is on their side. They believe, as medieval Christians used to assert, that people who do not agree with them have no right to live. That is what happens when people believe God is on their side, or that they are on God's side. If you aren't on God's side, whose side are you on?
What astounds me are the ordinary people--the perfectly normal neighborhood people--who, in the face of Mid-Eastern religious fanaticism, are serene in the belief that we, on the other hand, are God's Chosen People, who think that our own particular form of religion ought to shape our state, our nation, our laws, our ethics, our own particular beliefs that God is on our side.
It does not matter what the religion is: people who claim that God is on their side are worse than dangerous. They are ignorant, and ignorance is inpenetrable. It is a most savage form of defense, because anybody--anybody--who claims to have God on his or her side has absolutely no reason to respect anybody else.
Every religion, at heart, is a claim that the world,the nation, and the town--the universe!--ought to be organized according to what they believe. Maybe that White people are superior, maybe that men are naturally and obviously superior to women, maybe that eating pork is evil, and that having four or forty wives is a good idea, maybe that the reward for blowing yourself up in a farmer's market will result in seventy virgins waiting for you in heaven, maybe that drinking coffee is wicked, or that dancing is evil, maybe that if you don't believe that your own half-mad holy man is a special servant sent from God, or that your very special, ungrammatical holy writings were dictated by God Himself (God Herself being an absurd notion). When people believe that God is on their side, there is no more common sense, there is no more rational behavior, there is no more room for other opinions!
It is illogical, ignorant, to howl about fanatics in Iraq or Syria, and not to recognize that home-grown fanaticism is more of the same.
Catholics do want to organize society according to their beliefs. Baptists do want to specify what is permissable and pernicious. Pentacostals and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Two Seed in the Spirit Predestination Baptists have very strong ideas about what this, or any other country, should be like, and sooner or later, when the time seems right, they will insist on it because God wants it.
We are not a Christian nation. We are a nation with a lot of Christians in it, but with a lot of other, equally religious, and non-religious, people, too. We have a constitution that states, as well as its writers could say it, what kind of a nation we should be. And what they stated was that we can be religious if we want to, but that we cannot impose it on other people. The state is not religious, but the state will not deny you the right to believe that God is green and jealous and hopelessly chauvinistic, if that tickles your fancy. Go ahead, believe that men are superior to women, or that Whites are Superior to Brown people, but do it behind a bush or a barn wall somewhere. Out in the open, our Constitution is the backbone of what we are as a nation.
There are very good reasons why the course of human history has turned its back on Holy Lands, and Holy Empires, and religious city-states. Every one of them, however sensible and benign it first might appear, has a savage backbone: the belief that God is on their side. People who believe that God is on their side have no reason to respect alternatives.
In Syria and Iraq today--but certainly not just there--profoundly religious zealots are engaging in brutal attacks on anybody who does not agree with them religiously. They believe they have the truth. They believe God is on their side. They believe, as medieval Christians used to assert, that people who do not agree with them have no right to live. That is what happens when people believe God is on their side, or that they are on God's side. If you aren't on God's side, whose side are you on?
What astounds me are the ordinary people--the perfectly normal neighborhood people--who, in the face of Mid-Eastern religious fanaticism, are serene in the belief that we, on the other hand, are God's Chosen People, who think that our own particular form of religion ought to shape our state, our nation, our laws, our ethics, our own particular beliefs that God is on our side.
It does not matter what the religion is: people who claim that God is on their side are worse than dangerous. They are ignorant, and ignorance is inpenetrable. It is a most savage form of defense, because anybody--anybody--who claims to have God on his or her side has absolutely no reason to respect anybody else.
Every religion, at heart, is a claim that the world,the nation, and the town--the universe!--ought to be organized according to what they believe. Maybe that White people are superior, maybe that men are naturally and obviously superior to women, maybe that eating pork is evil, and that having four or forty wives is a good idea, maybe that the reward for blowing yourself up in a farmer's market will result in seventy virgins waiting for you in heaven, maybe that drinking coffee is wicked, or that dancing is evil, maybe that if you don't believe that your own half-mad holy man is a special servant sent from God, or that your very special, ungrammatical holy writings were dictated by God Himself (God Herself being an absurd notion). When people believe that God is on their side, there is no more common sense, there is no more rational behavior, there is no more room for other opinions!
It is illogical, ignorant, to howl about fanatics in Iraq or Syria, and not to recognize that home-grown fanaticism is more of the same.
Catholics do want to organize society according to their beliefs. Baptists do want to specify what is permissable and pernicious. Pentacostals and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Two Seed in the Spirit Predestination Baptists have very strong ideas about what this, or any other country, should be like, and sooner or later, when the time seems right, they will insist on it because God wants it.
We are not a Christian nation. We are a nation with a lot of Christians in it, but with a lot of other, equally religious, and non-religious, people, too. We have a constitution that states, as well as its writers could say it, what kind of a nation we should be. And what they stated was that we can be religious if we want to, but that we cannot impose it on other people. The state is not religious, but the state will not deny you the right to believe that God is green and jealous and hopelessly chauvinistic, if that tickles your fancy. Go ahead, believe that men are superior to women, or that Whites are Superior to Brown people, but do it behind a bush or a barn wall somewhere. Out in the open, our Constitution is the backbone of what we are as a nation.
There are very good reasons why the course of human history has turned its back on Holy Lands, and Holy Empires, and religious city-states. Every one of them, however sensible and benign it first might appear, has a savage backbone: the belief that God is on their side. People who believe that God is on their side have no reason to respect alternatives.
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