A RELIGION IS NOT A MENU AND MANY WILL TRY TO FOOL YOU
ABOUT WHO THEY ARE IN RELIGIOUS TERMS
The person who respects you will not confuse you by identifying with a religious label that does not truly describe them. Part of that is when they pick what suits them and discard the rest. People die for others to have a religious faith so to try and use their legacy for your own ends is reprehensible.
Each religion is a system held together by opinions. An
opinion is a view that could be wrong and therefore to have an opinion is to be
open to have it challenged. An opinion is weak if the person has little reason
to hold it. It is strong if he has good grounds for it. If the person values
honesty and truth more than his attraction for his opinion he will welcome the
challenge and will see that if his opinion is indeed true it has nothing to fear
from being challenged or questioned. People who encourage religious opinions no
matter how weird or out of touch they are not thinking straight. They are
forgetful or unaware that in matters of morality people disagree radically in
many things. And they do not realise that some people think you can kill to make
others happier and so on for happiness is what matters. And others think rules
are rules no matter what the circumstances.
If a religion's members are no better or worse than
people in general, then why have religion? It only makes differences between
people that some will pick on to create suspicion and havoc. For example,
Catholic and Muslim children go to separate schools. Telling them to work for
peace between religions will have no effect. What does have an effect is
allowing them to mix freely.
A religion is sometimes described as a club. A club is
about the members deciding what decisions are for the best for them. Religion is
not a club. The cherry-pickers are misrepresenting their religion by treating it
as a club. It's a faith not a club. It's a faith not a collection of opinions.
The leaders of religion make the decisions while caring
little - if at all - for the needs of those whom they lead. They are the men who
pretend that they give us the word of God. The believer never gets the word from
God but gets it second-hand.
Atheists do not set up terrorist groups. Some
religionists do. If religion is mere opinion and causes that trouble then let
that be a warning to us. If opinion can lead to bloodshed and terror then faith
should do it far better.
The cherry-pickers are intolerant in the sense that they
detest religion as it is and pretend that it is mere opinion. They do not
respect religion's opinion that if you think it is wrong then you must look for
another religion and be true to it and yourself. The cherrypickers are no
example of tolerance so they cannot expect religious leaders to be tolerant.
Trust is by nature only lawful if it is not misplaced.
It is simply cruel and twisted to have people trusting in what might not be true
or which then will or could let them down. Trust implies, "I need protection and
to be safe." A la carte people promote religion that they themselves see as
untrustworthy. They promote it by example at least but that does not make it any
less right. People trust others to pray for them so by implication they do not
trust God and think God needs to be asked before he will bother to care. It
would be strange to trust others to pray for you to God as if God can be trusted
then. If he is not trustworthy, people getting him to act by asking him does not
make him trustworthy.
A religion has to be judged primarily on the credibility
of its standard teaching. It has to have standards unique to itself though there
may be overlaps with the standards of other religions in order to be a religion
or a specific religion. If you can believe what you want then it follows that
there is no true difference between Catholics and Hindus - only in the way the
religions are presented. There is no excuse for being in a religion that
officially teaches falsehood or that has standard doctrines that are incorrect.
The point is not how good the members are but the truth. It is not about you or
them but about honesty and truth.
Hypocrisy is bad in the sense that those who preach
goodness do not intend to practice it. It is good in the sense that it is still
saying that evil is evil and to be avoided. So why do we despise it? Because we
consider morality a curse not a blessing. We think it is about controlling us
more than making us happy. This shows that we do not like morality as much as we
tend to think. Therefore we cannot like religion. Picking what you like out of a
religion's required teachings is just another way of saying you don't like
religion much.
When people follow a religion just because they are used
to it and no longer see the bad side they may be confusing being used to the
religion to believing in it. If you take it for granted that Jesus is God that
is not the same as believing in it. You are merely assuming it and perhaps
feeling it.
Bad or good, a religion has the right and duty to set up required doctrines and to ask people who rebel against the teachings to leave. The person who rebels and won't leave is not respecting the religion or its right. And they are telling the world that the religion can reinvent itself and thus is man-made which is disrespectful when the religion claims to be god-made or the only faith approved by God. They come across as advertisements for their religion for they stand up for it at least to a point. People will see them as unrepresentative of the religion and failing to understand their duty to uphold the religion properly.
By supporting religion or pretending they do, they are
opposing truth though they pretend they are not. In the case of the
cherry-picking Catholic, the question will soon arise, "They claim to speak as
Catholics. Anybody can say that he speaks as a Catholic. How Catholic are they
really?
Cherry-pickers all differ from one another. The "good"
Catholic who uses birth-control and advocates it as being morally acceptable
against the teaching of the Church may not approve of the views of the "good"
Catholic who approves of gay relationships and is in one. Cherry-picking is no
basis for unity. It only makes hypocrites who demand acceptance of their view
and rejection of the views of others.
If you can be a proper and good member of a religion
while cherry-picking what it requires you to believe (an oxymoron) and the
religion permits this then the religion is responsible for the evil done in its
name (eg clerical sex abuse) or the evil done because it exists. You cannot then
say, "It is unfair to condemn the religion because some abuse it and their
position in it."
Cherry-pickers deny that their religion is necessarily good in what it does as a religion, in what it teaches as a religion in matters of faith and morals. This is dangerous because if you harbour suspicions about your religion, a better the devil you know attitude will creep in and colour your outlook. You will fear other religions especially the ones you know the least about. Sectarianism is often based on the view that one's own religion is dangerous or possibly harmful but since you are used to it you decide to put up with it and tell yourself that other religions are probably no better if not worse.
Why do believers worry about their opinion of God and
what God should teach. What about God's opinion? Is he not allowed
his?
Belief determines how you will act - all unkind actions
are down to unhealthy or irrational or stupid beliefs. It is important that a
religion is true.
If something is a fact, it is a fact. Watch out for those who say that when you state a fact, “Oh that is only your opinion” or “You are entitled to your opinion”. Such a person is judging you and accusing you of dressing up an opinion that may be right or wrong as the truth. They are trying to trivialise fact and undermine you. They are possibly implying that are no truths or facts but only opinions. That is a dangerous idea and if they really believe it they will have to admit the right of a man to beat his wife to death as long as it's his opinion. True respect for reason is true respect for people. Religious cherry-pickers are turning religion into opinions. They care little for facts.
You have atheists who cherry-pick. You have seculars who do it. A lot of people do it. Now if I say I have no religion and still go to holy communion then I am cherry-picking non-belief. In many cases a person with no religion who cherry-picks Catholicism is no different at all from a person who cherry-picks and who says they identify as Catholic.
Cherry picking anything is degrading yourself by being an advocate for lying and dishonestly and hypocrisy. Catholicism teaches it is the whole truth - the word Catholic means whole. Nobody has the right to take advantage of a religion that is unable to assert its standards, it cannot do much about heretics, by violating those standards in its name. A truly good religion or truthful or true religion will not need cherry-picking. The fact remains that cherry-pickers still in some way, usually structurally, contribute to the voice and influence of the leaders and it is counter-productive to solving a religion's problems and unethical practices. If cherry-picker Catholics left the Catholic framework the bishop would not be head of the local school. That is an example.
The lesson is respect truth as far as you understand it and be open to changing your mind and living in honesty and remember that identifying as an atheist or Catholic or whatever does not necessarily mean you are competent in identifying so you could be mistaken.
Ideology is an addiction to an idea or set of ideas. Cherry picking or being selective with facts is the core ingredient. Cherry-picking respects the religious ideology in the way you respect a cafeteria menu. It sets up another ideology for it is fundamentally dishonest. Liberal religion by definition is more dangerous than fundamentalism. It can be as much an ideology as it. It has killed people too.
