Will Religion Ever Be Able to Excise Extremist Fundamentalists?

Nope....wack jobs are everywhere....and they'll use anything to push their agenda...

the bible, koran, torah is not the issue....if they weren't there they'd find another tool...
 
Perhaps. According to a whole lot of people, including many on this site, religion rises above all other human endeavors because religions are the teachings of God(s). Every other human endeavor is based on human teachings.

So human philosophical teachings, like Mao's Little Red Book, or racial hatred, or cultural hatred can be used for evil because they are the teachings of humanity.

And yet religion is one of the most often abused philosophies to justify hate. Religions, if they are of God(s) should not be in this group at all, instead of being one of the worst.
 
um....er....religions are the teachings of man....of men....who believe they talked to G!ds....


As long as they are 2,000 years old or so...we like it....

Modern people who say they talked to G!d and write books.....folks get excited about.
 
That's actually two words. I know. Picky, picky, picky. Unfortunately I agree with you.

Wil, I agree with you as well that religious teachings are the words of humans. Most religious folk would not agree with us, however. And if people believe these words are from Gods, they have the highest moral standard to abide accordingly. All too often they fail abysmally! Far too often they fail abysmally!
 
If it wasn't for the fundamentalist who showed me the superstition, the fear, the power struggle, the selfishness and the egoism of religion, which even the more moderate members of the religion felt they could do nothing to disown, I might have not had the disgust-driven impetus to renounce my own club membership and begin looking for something that upheld the best of human aspiration, rather than pandering to the worst excesses of human depravity in the name of God.
 
Gordian Knot said:
That's actually two words. I know. Picky, picky, picky. Unfortunately I agree with you.

Wil, I agree with you as well that religious teachings are the words of humans. Most religious folk would not agree with us, however. And if people believe these words are from Gods, they have the highest moral standard to abide accordingly. All too often they fail abysmally! Far too often they fail abysmally!
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God is love and anything that contradicts that is a misinterpretation of scripture.
 
wil said:
So G!d is a human body of love? Is that a contradictory misinterpretation or just stupid?
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No its not stupid. Spirit is consciousness and consciousness that is love is whole body. Then you have soul which is patterned after the spirit which is multicolored light that is love but is emotion. Then you have the body that is patterned after that which is the senses the skin for the whole being. This whole being is love literally so no its not stupid.
 
Gordian Knot said:
Is it possible to ever rid religion of the fundamentalist extremists who take the teachings of a supposedly loving God and distort it into hatred of everything their narrow minds find objectionable?

Or is fundamental extremism always going to be a part of religions.

Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Robin Williams’ Funeral?
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No, I don't think so. The fundamental extremists will always be part of religions. All religions have them and will always do. In the First Century we had the Sicari who would kill any one with the smell of a Hellenist Jew as a traitor. Throughout History millions of Jews have been murdered by fundamental extremists from Christianity.
 
Gordian Knot said:
Perhaps. According to a whole lot of people, including many on this site, religion rises above all other human endeavors because religions are the teachings of God(s). Every other human endeavor is based on human teachings.

So human philosophical teachings, like Mao's Little Red Book, or racial hatred, or cultural hatred can be used for evil because they are the teachings of humanity.

And yet religion is one of the most often abused philosophies to justify hate. Religions, if they are of God(s) should not be in this group at all, instead of being one of the worst.
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Religions are not the teachings of God but of religious men. Isaiah said that those who do not teach according to the Law and the Prophets, it is because there is no truth in what they say. (Isa. 8:20) Therefore, they cannot be the teachings of God.
 
wil said:
Which whole being is light and love? G!d? or man made in His image?
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Man was not made in the image of God because God does not have an image. Man was made in the perception of God's attributes. (Gen. 1:26; Isa. 46:5; Deut. 4:15,16) God is a Spirit and, spirits are incorporeal. There is no image in incorporeality.
 
wil said:
I thought it said man was made in G!d's image?
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Whatever that means - I think it is more of a koan than a factual statement. Even then, can we be sure that those words accurately represent to us how things are several thousand years after they were first written?

What is clear is that man seeks to define God in man's own image, which really is ridiculous, even if it is a natural property of the brain/body to try and reduce everything to a sound-byte.

The intellect is just not up to the task of understanding how things actually are. Our brains have not evolved for that purpose. Attempts to force understanding lead to limitation and distortion - or that is how it seems to my intellect!

I am reminded of the kid's understanding of the Lord's Prayer, which contained such gems as "Alfred be thy name" and "Lead us not into Thame's station" - all allegedly genuine misinterpretations of the text, and said with reverence.

We are probably just like that when we use the intellect alone.
 
wil said:
I thought it said man was made in G!d's image?
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Yeah, but if you go literal throughout the Bible, you will be only digging more and more contradictions. That's the same with a poem. If you take it literally, you will be getting nowhere. In Deuteronomy 4:15,16 God has no image and by admitting to Him the image of a man or a woman, we will only corrupt ourselves. Then, Isaiah said in 46:5 that God cannot be compared with any thing whatsoever. To compare something with another, we must believe that both must have an image.
 
Gordian Knot said:
Is it possible to ever rid religion of the fundamentalist extremists who take the teachings of a supposedly loving God and distort it into hatred of everything their narrow minds find objectionable?

Or is fundamental extremism always going to be a part of religions.

Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Robin Williams’ Funeral?
Click to expand...

I hope (and think, based on history) the radical guys will slowly get less radical. Of course there will always be a group considered the most radical of whomever is left, just as getting rid of the shortest person in a group just creates a new shortest person.

I consider fundamentalists of all religions as having far more in common with other fundamentalists of different religions that they do with their own religion. They're basically all saying, "I'm right and you;re wrong, and I will do anything at all to prove that fact to you." Fundamentalism is a danger for all religions.
 
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