Religion: Evil? PART 2

As for his claims that religion should be private and nobody else's business:

If the materialists' claims are true, and nothing exists except the physical, if all thoughts and emotions that people have are just electricity in our brains, then it doesn't matter what religion someone is, everybody dies, and perpetuation of life in general and the species in particular is the highest ideal and top priority. If perpetuation of the species requires religion be silenced for the sake of world peace, then so be it.

If the monists' and new-agers' claims are true, and the spiritual and physical are only differing views of one grand and infinite reality, then again it doesn't matter which religion someone is, that person is a small fragment of the Divine anyway. If the evolution of humanity into Divine Awareness is the goal of existence, then so be it.

However, between these two extremes, there are numerous worldviews that may or may not be true, and if they are true, they have immediate ramifications in the here and now.

Mainstream Protestant / Evangelical Christianity, for example, claims that God created everything, that sin has eternal consequences, and that we each, personally, have only a short hundred years or less to repent of our hurtful actions against God and other people.

There are stated consequences of not repenting and accepting Jesus' crucifixion as paying the penalty for a person's sins: an eternity in hell.

Obviously, if this is true, everybody should know, because everybody is in danger of being separated from God in an unpleasant place forever. Obviously, it is in everyone's best self-interest to find out if it is true.

So why is there this attitude of "chill, dude, it can't be all that bad"?

Because some people believe it can't honestly be that bad.

Because other people remember the Crusades and the forced conversions of the past, and say that anyone who did such things can't be trusted.

Because it is widely reported to be a fringe-lunatic superstitious worldview with no scientific basis or merit.

There are elements of the church that have accepted the materialists' worldview, but have made statements like, "there is a spiritual reality in which the Bible is true, and it is that which our faith is focused on."

There are elements of the church which agree with the world that religion should be personal, private, and unshared. Those elements are unprepared for a physical return of Jesus to this Earth, or the trumoil that would accompany such an event.

There are those today who would go a step further than this gentleman quoted in my previous blog posting, who would ban all religions, reasoning that world peace would follow. This may indeed occur; remember, however, that most wars are not about religions. They are about control. Money. Power. They are about resources. They are about systems of government.

Beware those who say they're doing something "for your own good". I am merely voicing / typing / posting my worldview, allowing you, the reader, to choose freely. There are those who would enforce a specific worldview. There are those who already enforce their worldview. It is freedom, not coercion, that made America great. It is coercion, not freedom, that will one day ruin America.