IS CHALLENGING RELIGIOUS FAITH CRUEL?
Religion is not the only thing people have faith in. Yet it seeks special
protection and even some atheists enable this unfairness usually on the
grounds of "tolerance". We challenge faith all the time just not
religious faith. Faith is faith and we should challenge religious faith.
There are far more immediate and urgent matters than how somebody feels
about their place in the universe with God and what will happen to them
after death. You don't look for a crutch with more urgent and serious
matters such as your child's cancer battle. A crutch is not needed or looked
for in the biggest things.
If somebody has horrible side-effects from their tablets and they are still
better off taking them, you do not encourage them to have faith that going
off them will be for the best.
If a child is dying you do not encourage the parents to have faith that she
is going to live.
If somebody needs to believe that they own property when they do not, you
have to tell them.
When people of faith, seem to be helped by that faith we must remember that
there is more to their faith than just religious faith. Faith is complex and
consists of many faiths. Nobody has faith strictly speaking. What you have
is faiths. You have faith that you will go to Barcelona in the autumn, that
your kid will go to school this year, that there won't be a global nuclear
war. Thus to challenge religious faith is not to challenge the rest of the
faiths that a person has. The person still has plenty of crutches if you
could take away the religious one.
Religious people are just bigots when they have faiths not faith and are so
over-protective of their religious faith. If you intend to challenge their
religious faith, you will find it helpful to help them to see how little
religious faith matters to them when they think about it carefully. They
need to see that it is only a small part of their faith setup.
Religious people by their manner and the way they behave and talk, forestall
attempts to debate religion with them or attempts to invite them to rethink
their doctrines.
The dictionary defines a bigot as an obstinate person meaning one who does
not welcome hearing his faith being challenged.
The religious person has others thinking, "I will not say anything that
questions what he or she believes as he or she will not thank me for it.
They might complain that I have taken their faith away or tried to. They may
resent me for asking them to rethink something that is important to them in
terms of comfort."
When people feel that religion should be challenged and especially when it is
a dangerous form of religion and say nothing for the sake of peace, they are
showing how they think religious people are vicious and stubborn bigots who
want to stay ignorant. That is no way to promote peace and harmony. It shows
you think that if you rock the boat at all they will throw off their robes
of charm and holiness and show their true colours.
The impressionable religious people could end up feeling that they have to
be bigots to be true servants of their religion. Anything that encourages
them to put faith before truth is giving them that message.
If a believer is afraid of the way the world is going, the believer can be
very insecure if his religion is challenged by those who disagree with it.
This person is using the faith to cope with the fears that changes bring.
The person may use religious faith to cope with sickness or the fear of
death or to feel that he or she has a friend in God. A crutch is little help
if it is so fragile. It is better if it breaks.
If your faith in what you call the one true faith is a crutch then you are
going to by default oppose other faiths. You accuse people in other
religions of being in bad faith or of not being good enough to make a crutch
as good as yours or as correct.
When religious faith has meaning for a person chiefly because it helps the
person feel less alone, that is an indication that the person is
dissatisfied with his or her relationships and friends and needs to believe
in a God that suits him so that the needs are fulfilled better. The person
may be a bit of sociopath and will turn vicious if his crutch is challenged.
That would be the kind of person who would describe an activist for atheism
as a disgrace or fitted only for everlasting damnation.
The religionist who listens to the person who tells her why she should wean
herself away from religion may say, "I regret that you are taking my faith
away from me." But nobody ever can take one's faith away. We never ever
change anybody's minds. We give them the tools so that they will do it
themselves.
Religions that love to display their good works tend to attract the people
looking for a crutch the best. The crutch seekers feel uplifted by seeing
the good works.
People want to believe in something that can make life okay or bearable in
times of trouble. That’s what’s attractive about believing in God.
What helps is belief. Many say the power of religion is not in the power of
God but in the power of belief. Belief is your creation, your
self-empowerment. So it's not God that helps but belief in God. But why does
the belief need to be in God? Why not believe in your power to find strength
within, a strength that is all your own? That would be better and more
effective.
To talk about belief in belief is to talk about belief as a crutch. To say,
as Jesus did, that there is a God who deserves all our love is to say that
God matters even more than belief in him does. He matters more than any
belief. So it’s a sin for Christian to advocate belief in belief. Belief in
belief really translates as, “Belief is desirable and beneficial. It matters
not what you believe as long as you like the belief. To hell with anybody
who says you must try to believe only what God approves of or you must
believe only what the evidence supports.”
One thing for sure is that it is not right to manipulate people to think
they need belief in God when this belief is really a hidden form of belief
in themselves.
The Roman Catholic Church, as a faith, has deceived the people and
especially the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. There is no
such thing as a good Catholic. No. What is called a good Catholic is a good
human being who has the Catholic label. The point is that it is people who
are good - not religions. It is people who make up charities that look after
the poor not charities. Same principle!
Members of religion tend to do what they like until they get older and
realise that death is a possibility and then they get religious. Religion
thrives on exploitation of the vulnerable.
When people accept a religion without having investigated it carefully and
well, that is a sign they are using it as a crutch. They use it to indulge
their laziness instead of the painful and difficult task of checking things
out.
If you are in your religion just because it is there, you are using it as a
crutch. That is laziness.
To take your child and influence or brainwash her into religion and into
adopting it as a crutch is child-abuse. It is trying to create a form of
addiction in the child. The child could end up scared of other religions in
case they challenge her crutch. The child will be damaged by the
manipulative tactics you have deployed so shamelessly. What if the child
would not need the crutch? You have given her a crutch she does not need and
made her think she needs it! How cruel! What if the child could get a better
crutch?
If it is okay for you to have your religious crutch, it is certainly not
okay for you to have your child needing and using a similar crutch.
I find the following method of making life bearable and more enjoyable
extremely effective. The person you are most interested in is yourself.
Therefore if you make the habit of recording your day in detail in a diary
and putting in times and the most mundane things you are making sure you
will remember the good in that day. You will be able to look back at the bad
and good later with fascination. It makes the bad less bad because you know
that reading about it and the lessons in it will bring you enjoyment and
wisdom. When you experience something bad you can say that in years to come
you will still be able to look back on it and want to. It will console you
and make you more determined to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Great suffering can be waiting for you around the corner - all you can do is
get through it without making it worse. If God is what gives your life
meaning then surely you crave being with him? Thus your suffering will only
be worsened by belief in God. The more you suffer the more you will want him
and to be with him.
We all have the feeling that we will be okay at some point in the future. We
all have that crutch in common unless we suffer depression or something.
This is not a religious crutch though the person might mistake it for a
religious sentiment. Challenging that person's religious dogma then is not
the same as challenging his or her crutch.
Challenging religion is a good deed not a bad one. It is patronising to assume the person needs their faith as if they cannot rely on themselves.