Quote:
Originally Posted by Fire
I tend to think that the world would be better if the people that claim to be religious would READ THEIR FUCKING BOOKS..... forget the assorted commentaries, explanations, and whatnots that various groups have come to accept, Just have everyone read the holy book or books of their religion, and then TRY TO FOLLOW IT.... seriously, is this too fucking hard for people.... none of the religious texts I have read have really been that out there, and most of them are quite reasonable really..... with regard to the "Christians" in the above article, I find a decided lack of deliberate baiting of people of other faiths in the new testament....... but they should really read it for themselves.....
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While I sympathize, I think that it's too easy to either blame lack of reading the books or call religion a failure in general.
Guys like these douchebags can read the Bible all day long and still never comprehend a word they read. Bible is complex, and infinitely nuanced, and, in general, no friend to people looking for simplistic attitudes and lowest-common-denominator platitudes. It is inevitable that people like this-- full of hatred, of fear, of ignorance-- will find the religious position and the textual reading that is the most oversimplified, the most archaic, the best for channeling and sublimating their own fears and ignorance, and the least helpful to an actual search for spiritual advancement and closeness to God.
Religion has power. And like any power, it can be abused. And like nearly all of the most powerful things, it is abused frequently, with horrible results, and usually at the expense of precisely those people its inventors were trying to protect and aid.