REPLY TO DONVAN RE: WE SHOULD ALL BE HERETICS

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Nov 4, 2007 at 08:39

The term "Muslim Personality Disorder" reminds me of an amusing faux news item I read on the internet describing "Islamic Slicing Syndrome" in which Muslims, out of pure force of habit, inadvertently cut off their own heads with a sword. Yes, Islam is an exceptionally violent myth reservoir, a collection of bizarre edicts and compulsions that lead to enormous levels of human suffering. I have seen photographs of Muslim mothers lacerating the foreheads of their babies in religious ceremonies. In such cases religious fanatacism has managed to even overcome the innate maternal impulse to protect one's own offspring from harm.

The irrational nature of Muslim militancy was displayed graphically to the world last year when, in response to a few Danish cartoons that characterized Muslims as violent, Muslims across Europe and elsewhere went on a rampage of violence in protest. In the Middle East an irate Muslim pumped five bullets into the back of a sixty year old Catholic nun in an effort to prove just how peaceful Muslims really are.

I agree that there most likely is a sort of "hard wiring" in the human brain that lends itself toward belief in various mythologies. Personally I strongly suspect that Jesus Christ is a totally mythical figure as well. There is little or no evidence to indicate the actual physical existence of a Jesus Christ and none of the writers of that era from the Middle East---at least forty of them known to have existed---make any reference him. There is only scant mention of a being called "the lamb" in the Old Testament and only in later edtions of the Bible are more elaborate references found, indicating they were probably fictional. Considering the absurdity of the whole Virgin Birth story it is easy to see how this entire Christ figure was a fabrication.

I have a hard time being too critical of Christians, however, because as an American most of my friends and neighbors are Christians and they are decent honest people. But I have been able to view religion from the uncommon vantage point of having been raised without it. My parents were both Atheists, as were the only set of grandparents I knew as a child. When I was a kid and my Christian kid friends tried to explain to me what they were being taught in church I was simply incredulous; I couldn't believe anyone would fall for such obvious nonsense. Pressing them on some of the irrationalities of it all they would usually admit that it didn't make much sense to them either.

But for the true believers there seems to be an endless ability to rationalize away any criticism of their beliefs, no matter how often their deity lets them down. I have seen people form a "prayer chain" to try to keep a sick baby alive. When they baby died anyway they all shook their heads and muttered "God must have needed him more than we did." I'm scratching my head and thinking 'so God ignores your prayers, takes the baby's life anyway and you think that's okay?' It makes no sense to me.

On Easter Sunday of 2006 in the Bronx, New York a family was on their way to church with their two year old toddler dressed in his Sunday best and strapped into his car seat when a bullet fired by a drug dealer a block away punched through the back door of the car and killed the toddler. It was the most awful kind of crime, violence against an innocent child. Yet I am sure that these believers had---at least up until that moment---been certain that their God was looking after them and protecting their child as well. Now the question that arises in my mind is this: If the Christian God isn't going to protect a toddler from a violent death while on his way to church on Easter Sunday, then why would anyone believe he was going to protect anyone else under any circumstances from anything? Did he 'need the baby more than they did?'

Even in such extreme cases it is not uncommon for those who have suffered a tragedy to give God a pass. Clinging to the belief system becomes more important than facing verifiable reality, even if it rationalizes the death of a child. Such is the power of myth in the human psyche.

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