This is a photograph of the killings that happened in Garissa, Nothern Kenya this morning. This is what religion does. This is why we should challenge religious faith! Please share this photo for the sake of the Country!
Religious people- be they Christian, Muslim, or Jew- have a tendency to view themselves as righteous and peaceful, even as they adhere to faith traditions that have been using to justify varying degrees of genocide over the course of human history. Millions upon millions have been slaughtered in the name of religion by those who consider themselves defenders of the One and True Faith. Whether we’re talking about the Holocaust, the Crusades, the war in Bosnia, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum, the fact is that religions which profess to be about love, tolerance, and acceptance have been anything but peaceful.
The latest iteration of this saga is the massacre in Garissa, Kenya. Gunmen affiliated with the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab killed at least 147 people and wounded at least 79. That this sort of atrocity has attracted relatively little attention in this country is indication of just how prevalent and accepted as the norm religiously-motivated violence has become.
No matter how hard I might try, I can’t manage to wrap my head around the phrase, “religiously-motivated violence.” It’s not just because “religion” and “violence” should never have cause to be used in the same sentence. Looking at the picture above, one might be tempted to agree with the quote from the Atheists in Kenya Facebook page. How COULD such senseless mass murder be justified in the name of a religion? What kind of religion would sanction such random and senseless mass murder?
The line I’m drawing is that there are religions and belief systems, and objective truths. And if we’re going to govern a country, we need to base that governance on objective truths — not your personal belief system.
The truth is that such “religiously-motivated violence” has nothing to do with religion. Al-Shabaab is as much about Islam as Fox News is about objective journalism. In no way is mass murder about religion. There’s nothing in Islam that provides justification for terrorism and mass murder. Religion doesn’t cause “religiously-motivated violence.” Virulent hatred willing to twist the teachings of a religion in pursuit of power and control does. Religion in concept is about love, tolerance, and acceptance. Whatever your faith tradition may be, it’s almost certainly at its most basic about co-existence and making the world a better place. Radical jihadism (or radical Christianity or anything else) has nothing to do with anything positively associated with religious faith. It has nothing of value to offer humanity, because it’s about hatred, destruction, death, and power.
My personal angle on this issue is that I don’t believe in God, but I hesitate to call myself an atheist. I’ve always hated that label, something I’ve always associated with denying the validity of religion. I may not believe in God, but I understand the meaning religious faith can and does have for many well-meaning people. The short version is that I’m for anything that makes the world a better place, and there are many who endeavor to follow the teachings of a religion and work hard to make that happen. From where I sit, that can only be a good thing.
Religion is not the problem. A faith tradition is merely a philosophy, a collection of ideas and teachings intended to enhance life and one’s relationship with it. Religions don’t condemn, degrade, oppress, or kill people. Hatred is the problem. It’s what drives people to pick, choose, and bastardize aspects of religious faith to dovetail with their ignorance, fears, and prejudices. Hatred is what causes people to view “non-believers” (those not enlightened enough to share their views) as “less than.” It’s what allowed Crusaders to kill millions of non-Christians and Germans to kill six million Jews.
Hatred is what allows so called “men of God” to assert that God hates gays so much that he’ll punish them with plagues so that they will suffer in unspeakable agony. And that the LGBT community “won’t rest” until there are no more Christian churches. And that God will punish America for “the things homosexuals do in private.” And that gays will force hetersexuals to like anal sex and bestiality. And that businesses who refuse to serve the LGBT community are “the real victimes of discrimination.” And that daring to criticize Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is to invite “a tsunami of perversion and all manner of wicked sin” and lays the groundwork for a Nazi-like persecution of Christians. And that as Muslims were taking over Idaho (Idaho? Really??), gays were overthrowing the federal government and ushering in a new era of “homofascism.”
I could go on, but all of the above is from one website- Right Wing Watch- whose staff puts their collective mental health at risk every day tracking Right-wing religious loons whose Christian faith bears not even the faintest resemblance to the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s not about love, or compassion, or good works, or any of the things that comprise the Gospel. Jesus’ teachings were about love, acceptance, and inclusion. When your Christian faith is about hatred, intolerance, and exclusion, you have no faith; you’re a sociopath pursuing your own self-interested agenda- or even worse, that of a psycopathic megalomaniac presenting themselves as a prophet sent by God Almighty.
There was a time when I believed religion to be the source of all evil in this world, but I’ve come to realize that’s overly simplistic. Religion is merely a thing that in and of itself is incapable of any action. In the hands of a sociopath (or even worse, a psycopath), however, religion becomes a tool useful for enforcing whatever one’s personal hatred, fear, and prejudice happens to be.
Religion may well be the opiate of the masses, but I don’t believe Marx was referring to religious teachings themselves. No, a far greater danger comes in the form of those who would employ religion as a means of seizing power and control over the easily influenced. As Voltaire once said, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
That is the problem.
