Evil of Pick and Mix Religion

Cherry picking comes from wanting to believe something so you present evidence for it that suits it. You dismiss, rationalise away or ignore any evidence that is against it.  You ignore how the evidence you present may point to other conclusions as well.  That takes a lot of work. A lot.  Therefore, it is impossible to deny that pick and mix persons are to some degree trying to deceive themselves and that entails being ready to deceive others too.  You need to manipulate them to help you feel your belief is plausible and/or fully honest.

You may be told that they are selecting evidence and support the way they do for they want to believe and not because they want to fool or corrupt truth searching.  But that does not tell us if most people who cherry pick mean well. Statistics give conclusive evidence that they don't.  That would mean we would have to assume people are probably dishonest.

Why you desire to believe makes a difference.  If you want to believe say in Catholicism because your friends do that is not the same as wanting to believe for you think Catholicism is what the true religion would look like.  With the first you are clearly unreliable and the truth does not matter to you.  With the second you cling to the hope that it is true for if it is not you think you have nowhere to go.  While that may be a better or more honest reason to want to believe, it is still inviting bias and inviting you to fool yourself.

All adults know from experience that wanting to believe something leads to trouble.  Yet they go and do it again with a new belief.  So there is no excuse. Wanting to believe is wanting to deceive.  Even if it did not have to be, you can both want to believe and want to deceive at the same time.

We have to treat the cherry picking person gently regardless of all the deception.  Gently nudge them towards rethinking and ask what they think.  Then you may get them to open up to evidences they need to look at.  I'd ask them if they want to believe and why.

That is how we approach the individual.  A religious system is not a person and needs robust dealing with for cherry picking.  Then it is a scourge that needs a firm hand.  The difficulty there is a religion can openly lie and get away with it as criminal law does not cover this.

THOSE WHO CHERRY PICK RELIGION ARE AS HARMFUL AS THE RELIGION
 
Cherry-pickers of their religion keep defending the religion in some important way or ways as if it can rehabilitate and as if it is up to it to learn from them how to do that. This is pathetic and is terrible when they should be trying to dismantle it.

Do not forget you cannot be just a cherry-picker of your religion.  The cherry-picker "Catholic" cherrypicks another ideology as well.  Catholics who choose what they prefer out of say toxic socialism are the main type.  Integrity means being whole - it means being really committed to what you say you are committed to.

They tend to do what philosopher Roland Barthes warned us about. He made the point that people who are into moral subterfuge confess a little evil to blind themselves to a lot of big evil.

They even cherry pick what evils they want to focus on. They want to fool others which is the reason they act as if they believe their own lies. You fool yourself only when you want to fool others.

Some bemoan the sins of their religious leadership. This is a tactic where you tacitly admit that you are accountable for looking to such people for leadership. Yet in all this “moral subterfuge and apologism” you are using sin and evil and flaws to justify the Church’s continued existence and power. This tactic Barthes says is using a little confessed evil to deny a lot of hidden evil. There is still a lot of blind loyalty to the religious institution and a problem with logic and that is bad. You cannot really represent progressive people by insisting on devotion to the Church in public.

Nothing changes the fact that no social construct such as marriage or religion matters more than one human life. A religion that is about to sacrifice a life – in line with its teaching or against them that does not matter and should not matter in this case – should be dismantled so it will not do it again and out of respect for the person that died. It does not matter how achievable it is. It is about what is right.

Religion is an artificial construct. An artificial construct still has consequences. It is better pulled down for it is not real and even if the consequences are good

A religion needs you to agree with its required teachings.  You need to do it or go for don't be a hypocrite.  Liberals keep forgetting that if Jesus was a fraud or God he still set standards for what his followers have to believe to be followers. Christians changing the message does not alter the fact that it is not their message to change.

If you cherry-pick what you like or what you think is true and disregard the rest you are dishonest.  And religions do not accept converts who disagree with its core and required teachings.  Cherry-pickers probably agree with that approach and understand why.  Islam cannot function if it starts taking in converts who do not recognise Muhammad as a prophet.  Indeed they are not really converts.  Cherry-pickers have no right to agree with the exclusion of cherry picker converts while they cherry-pick themselves.

If you are in a religion, it is not up to you to decide what that religion should teach. You have to try and believe. There is no need for religion if you can pick and choose. You represent the religion and its teaching whether you like it or not. A bad or confused representative is still a representative. That is why a kindly person or a person who is nearly atheist but who identifies with a religion is not to be let off the hook. If the religion is bad the person needs encouragement to leave the religion. It is about helping the person and opposing the religion. It is encouraging the person to leave because you respect her or him totally but not the religion.

Religion next to politics, encourages and facilitates a culture of enabling. People tend to feel okay about letting others do evil they would not do themselves. That proves them more concerned about looking good than being good.

Members of a religion that claims to be the true faith has the right to criticise it and its doctrines and to try to persuade others to their cause. But they do not have the right to remain a member of the church in good standing while openly and publicly trying to convince others that church teachings are in error.

Every religion has doctrines that many members do not like or find too difficult. Avoid the dishonesty of picking and choosing doctrines as if from a menu and to respect the Church and its people by refusing to act like a loyal member when you are not. Cherry-pickers like to claim that the religion will improve if more members become like them. But that assumes the religion is just a social club. People who are lied to by a religion or who are victimised, feel even more victimised when they see others tacitly supporting that religion and going to its services and wearing its symbols. Cherry-pickers speak for themselves and not the religion and every religion has cherry-pickers. So how can they make out that they really are working in the proper manner for change? They are not. They hurt the cause of change with their hypocrisy and they enable a culture of deceit in a religion. They make a religion that opposes and ignores truth far worse. They antagonise the loyal believers by using the religion for their own ends and make them more trenchant . Their hypocrisy is an advert for taking the religion seriously. A cherry-picker is a poor advert for a religion that requires you to take it seriously but he or she is still an advert. To oppose your religion's teaching or undermine it, you have to admit that it is your religion's teaching and that you are not a faithful member . If the Catholic doctrines are revealed by the God of truth as that Church claims, then cherry-picking is not an option. A person who has the honesty to leave the Church politely and with respect and who dialogues with it if he wants change, is the one to be praised not the cherry-picker. One thing all cherry-pickers have in common is the denial of "The proof that we really have faith is in our living of it." You cannot live it by picking and choosing what to believe.
 
The Bible and the religious revelations from the Church are full of violence, nonsense and hate. No wonder believers pick out the nice bits and pretend the evil commands are not there. If you really believe the religion properly you will not treat it like that! There is something very vulgar and condemnatory about cherry-picking a scripture and religion that is supposedly from God like that. It is like saying, "This is my authority. It is more important and sacred than any other. Yet I will pick and choose from it." It is accepting the religion as inspired but with a "but". The religion deserves no honour not even this begrudging hypocritical honour. You drop bad religions and scriptures like they are burning coals put into your hands. You will if you have no leanings towards enabling violence or honouring it. The worse the religion is the more disgusting is the homage you pay to it. As the hypocrite pays homage to virtue by pretending to be virtuous so do you pay homage to the violence. You serve lies and lies are the first step to creating a violent society.
 
You don’t need the Bible /Church when you sit as judge over the vast majority of its doctrines and dismiss them as manmade and not from God. Why are you so sure of your infallible interpretation of a fallible book? Is that not insane? Have you any right to condemn the fundamentalist nuts who you accuse of being too sure of themselves?

As the creed says the Church is one and holy and Catholic (Catholic means it has the truth for all people and is an implicit claim to infallibility or access to unerring teachings) and apostolic the implication is that a person who knows what the Church teaches and denies it is no longer a believing Catholic but a cherry-picker. They may be culturally Catholic but even an atheist who was never baptised can manage that! Christ was very severe against those who were recognised as Jews but who were not really because their hearts were full of sin and heresy and pretence. Catholic Pharisees exist too.

How good is a religion when it produces such experts at pretending to be good? Not all religions have the pharisee problem to the extent that Catholicism does.

What you do shows what you really and deeply believe. Disobeying your claimed beliefs is a sign that you believe you believe not that you really believe. Christians who claim to love everybody will feel like fools for nobody in their right mind believes they do. It is not possible. While some people say they love religion for they want to be good in fact they are selective as to who gets that good and when.  A cherry-picker causes harm to those who care about truth and harms her or his own religion.

In the Bible, the apostle James, James 2, condemns faith that is not acted out implying that action and faith together are important while faith by itself is rubbish and dead.  Faith is only demonstrated by obedience not cherrypicking. It is even compared to the kind of faith the demons have!!  It is intolerable to the real Christian.

Galatians 2:16 says that it is THE faith in Christ is what you need to be saved and cleansed of sin before God. Faith in Christ is too vague and Paul is thinking of people like today's Christians who call a vague mismatch of religion and their own opinions faith. Faith is based on agreeing with what Jesus or God has expressly said.
 
Human nature is notorious for enabling evil with a smile. Evil needs to be softened by having lots of good put into the mix. That way it does more harm than shamelessly blatant and undiluted evil. A truly decent person does not even contemplate honouring an evil religion or book as being from God. He throws it away. The good bits are a reason for rejecting it not accepting it. Something that advocates good and teaches good and then teaches its opposite is worse than something that means well but does little else but damage.
 
When a holy religion or book commands murder or violence and/or agrees with murder and violence in the past, it should be dismissed as unholy - no ifs or buts. It should be discarded immediately. There are certain evils you must not look for excuses or reasons for. And holy creeds that honour a God who commands violence are top of the list.

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