Last week the FBI conducted raids in
Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment. The only thing on earth to save the testimony and those who follow it, are the members of the testimony, til the return of Christ in the clouds. We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming ... The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it. We will reach out to those who are yet blind in the last days of the kingdoms of men and bring them to life in Christ.
Their tactics include plans to kill law enforcement officials and then kill the officers who show up to the funerals of the initial victims. The group has posted videos of their training exercises online and the leader of this extremist group has allegedly researched how to make IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and has passed on the knowledge to other Hutaree followers with the intent that said IED’s be used on law enforcement officials.
Kenneth S. Stern, the American Jewish Committee's director on anti-Semitism and extremism, notes that although no broad conclusions can be made over this incident, the combination of a militaristic stance and anti-governmental ideals that has been emerging in the militia groups of today is troublesome.
Another interesting pattern to note that seems to be an ancient trend, not merely a modern development, is using God (gods, higher powers) as an excuse for violence and brutality; starting with the crusades, maybe even before then, right into modern day movements such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) which wishes to create a separate Boer state in South Africa where blacks are only allowed to stay as “guest workers”. The leader of this group, Eugène Terre'Blanche, became a “born again Christian” after spending several years in jail, and reemerged with a renewed conviction to promote the racist views of his party. This just goes to show that every religion, be it Christian, Muslim or even
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Reading this article made me really disappointed because this "Christian Warrior" group gives Christians a bad rep. and through their extremist actions, people generally take what they do and stereotype that ALL Christians are this way. It is true that Christians strive to evangelize and "save" those who are not believers of Christ but by taking the step of researching IED's is really scary ;(
"This just goes to show that every religion, be it Christian, Muslim or even FSM, has extremist factions, but these factions can in no way be made representatives of the whole." (yay!)
-Emily Niemann
Christianity gives Christians a bad rep. I'm sorry, but will someone open a history textbook? Christianity has had to have been dragged by the ear across the centuries into having even a semblance of the tolerance and love it claims a monopoly on!
You have, in the Old Testament, "the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
The New Testament's "Christ" is actually worse. Yes, I said worse. For all of the Old Testament God's faults, it didn't preach the incredible doctrine of Hell. Hell is arguably the most immoral concept ever conceived, because I do not think that even child-molester's deserve eternal torment (considering that that torment is infinite in its capacity). Can you imagine more pain than is possible to endure for eternity? Does that seem alright?
Historically the Church, and I mean every Church, has been foul and bigoted. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Innocent the Third, Saint Augustine's abominable doctrines, the banning of Copernicus' Heliocentric Theory, the torture of Galileo into recanting it, the killings of anyone who dared read the Bible themselves, the Salem Witch Trials, Slavery, Jew Killings, support of miscegenation laws, child molestation, lying to African people that Condoms cause HIV/AIDS, homophobia (which, by the way, is only justified by the Old Testament, most of which Christians have thrown out), laws against the teaching of Evolution in schools, the killings of abortion doctors, and now this Christian Warrior group.
Christianity has embarrassed itself. I didn't even go into its retardation of philosophy.
It bothers me that everyone still supports this. Every single religion in the world has spawned extremism. When you hand a bunch of people an irrational doctrine filled with "absolute moral rules" this is what happens. You get people who use these rules to justify doing whatever the bloody hell they want! And yet religion is still OK? Why is it ok to promote something that can justify this kind of barbarism? Are all Christians like this? Of course they aren't! And the cop out "well if it wasn't religion it'd be something else" is ludicrous. That's like saying it's alright to keep smoking because "if I don't get lung cancer it will be something else." No, it isn't representative of the whole, but as long as religion exists, so will extremism.
My friend and I were reading throgh some posts for fun and stumbled upon this post, and here is what he has to say (He's a senior at another school):
Sadly, religion and religious organizations have been responsible for many ills throughout history. However, religion, including Christianity, has also created some positives, both intangible and tangible. On a personal level, “Religious people view themselves as more fit, reporting better health, more energy, and less pain… They’re also less likely to smoke and more likely to be married, have supportive friends, and be treated with respect.” (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/the-benefits-of-religion/) On a national level, religion and social justice have been closely linked throughout American history, from Abolition to women’s suffrage through the civil rights movement, headed by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. While organized religion has caused mayhem in the past, it hasn’t been a tool for purely negative purposes; it has also caused tremendously positive impacts on peoples’ lives too.
Although religion doesn’t have a perfect track record, neither does atheism. Just look at Stalin’s “scientific atheism”!
My biggest worry is when people follow religion as codified law, without using any critical thinking or challenging the beliefs. However, this type of “groupthink” can happen in any human organization, religious or not, and it’s not fair to characterize all religions, or even Christianity as a whole, as evil. By nature, human beings form groups; it’s what kept us alive on the savanna, when everything was bigger than us, and that evolutionary preference has caused humans to coalesce into crowds ever since. If people didn’t fight over religious groups, they’d fight over race, class, ethnicity, gangs, anything with an “insider vs outsider” mentality. Religion and religious people aren’t evil maniacs trying to ruin the world, nor are they idiot sheeple; they’re regular people, just like us. They may be misguided, but they’re not the root of all evil: liars, thieves, and murderers existed far before organized religion.
All credit goes to my friend.
Religion helped implement most of the societal problems it helped to extinguish. Slavery was justified by Christianity. Women's suffrage was supported by the Catholic Church eventually, but the Bible has been used to justify the inferiority of women. For example, the Genesis story that Eve was created from a Rib of Adam, and that Eve was the first to partake in the forbidden fruit have been used to justify the inferiority of women.
Everyone points to the two classic examples of evil atheists, Stalin and Hitler(we don't actually know if he was an atheist, by the way. He often claimed to be Catholic). But these people did not use atheism as justification for their actions. They may have used Darwinism, but that is something else entirely. Atheism is not in itself a doctrine, but a belief in no God. It doesn't give a code of moral law; morality is left to the individual to decide upon.
Once again, the argument "if we didn't fight over religion, it would be something else" is a fallacy. Nothing has been used to justify more evil. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. There isn't an example. On top of that, the above quoted statement (which has already been addressed) is in the same category as "Well, if I didn't smoke and contract lung cancer, something else would kill me". Would we still fight? Yes. But I think it would be considerably less, especially considering that those who don't believe in an afterlife are considerably less likely to want to join the army, or send soldiers off to fight. Does anyone honestly believe that suicide bombers would exist if they didn't believe in an afterlife?
I'd like to make a distinction between being "moral" and having "virtue". Being a virtuous person is wanting to do good. Being moral is actually doing good. The religious leaders certainly have virtue, but the Pope, who perpetuates the lie that condoms spread aids, is not a moral person.
Groupthink is more likely to happen in a religious institution, because religion gives a set of absolute, unquestionable moral laws. You don't have to know the why, just that God says so. That type of mentality is far more likely to produce conflict than any other type of group, because other groups allow skeptics.
The "Good" that religion has contributed to the world has been mostly comprised of undoing wrongs it helped to justify in the first place. That earns it nothing, especially considering we're still dealing with the racism and misogyny that it helped start.
As for the benefits that religion provides for the individual, most of it isn't surprising. In the mean time, the nonreligious have been shown by 40 of 44 studies conducted on the issue to have a higher IQ. 93% of the National Academy of Sciences is nonreligious. This, contrasted with the "more likely to be respected" benefit that was mentioned, is disturbing. An atheist, for example, cannot get elected to public office unless he lies. What does this mean? The most intelligent honest people in the nation, those best fit to run it, cannot be elected to serve it.
I have no answer to the other benefits.
Thank you Sam for the long wall of text that almost no one's going to read.
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