My main problem with religion is and always has been, ever since I was a child, the unwillingness of some followers to accept anything other than the written word as the truth.
Take, for instance, a conversation I got into with an older woman at a get together today:
Woman: So my pastor is putting us on a fast, but some people are trying not to do it because they say they have Diabetes. Now I know they’re just trying to get out of it, because the Devil is putting those words in their mouths, just like He’s putting that disease in them.
Me: But…if they have Diabetes, shouldn’t they not go on a fast? And isn’t Diabetes an actual, documented, tangible ailment? And shouldn’t a doctor of some sort be supervising this fast? How is a Pastor qualified for this in any way?
For some reason, comments like mine are met with a lot of disdain, despite the fact that they are perfectly sensible and logical. I’ve had a lot of arguments about this, on both sides actually, discussing why religion and faith are the final frontier when it comes to casual conversation. I fully recognize the right to believe in whatever you want to believe, but shouldn’t you be able to back those beliefs up without spouting utter nonsense like that woman was?
Another thing that bothers me about religion is this doomsday scenario that has been espoused for centuries. One of Nietzsche’s main beefs with Christianity was that it encouraged people to live their lives on Earth as if it were a means to getting to Heaven. Thus, the main incentive to being nice to people becomes not altruism but getting yourself to Heaven, and furthermore, people are told over and over how shitty things here on Earth are compared to Heaven, thereby taking away from the pleasures that we receive in this lifetime.
I certainly understand the advantage of this, namely motivating people who are having a difficult time to look forward to something. It’s a great tactic, of course. But I have a big bone to pick with the televangelists who seem to only want to spend their time talking about how awful the world is. Apparently, there’s some guy named Jack Van Impe who uses his television show to talk about how Christ is coming to deliver us all from this Hell on Earth. From the looks of things, he’s a bit of an alarmist who can’t possibly be taken seriously with segments on his show that seem to parody Twilight Zone episodes. I mean, come on, Extraterrestrials?
That seems to be a pretty dated episode, but I thought it was hilarious and couldn’t find any newer ones. Today, instead of talking about aliens and “E.T.s,” Van Impe and his lady sidekick peruse such venerable institutions as Time Magazine and The Detroit News to look for support for their thesis that the end of the world is nigh. I mean, are they serious? Van Impe even went so far as to say that Saddam Hussein placed nuclear weapons in Syria– a premise that I don’t think he has any reason to believe other than pure speculation.
Besides building up distrust and disdain placed squarely on the Middle Eastern world, they do very little to convince anyone to do anything other than buy their products. It’s simply sickening to watch, but I can’t help it– it’s like a train wreck. What’s terrifies me is that there are people who truly believe these people, and that’s just what they’re banking on.
There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about how fantastic of a job the Neo-conservative stronghold has put on the Religious Right.
