Thursday, October 11, 2007

Questioning Belief


Religion – including Christianity and Judaism – is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." At least that's according to the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything" by journalist Christopher Hitchens.


He's partially correct, let me slightly modify that thought:

Humanity is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children and therefore, religion includes those elements.

It's this human element that poisons everything, including religion.

Quoted from How atheism is being sold to America, which is actually well worth reading - lots of good stuff in there. I had only read the first paragraph when I wrote the above but went back and read the whole thing after - David Kupelian does an excellent job taking on this subject.

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