I am baffled that personal experiences visiting a handful of churches is somehow enough for some to apparently give religion a pass.
In my experience, giving anyone or anything a pass involves forgiving a transgression. Forgiveness is indeed a cornerstone tenet of many faiths, including Christianity. Your assertion presumes everyone sees religion first as an evil to be forgiven, which is obviously not how adherents see it.
That the religious apologists in this thread have already acknowledged that all religions have shortcomings and crimes as well as wonder, purpose, and virtues, is the first argument that is a valid defense of the faith.
You choose to minimize personal experience, but personal experience is the very heart of a religious faith, just as it is the heart of a personal relationship with a lover, a neighbor, or an enemy. It IS personal.
That diminishment by you implies that I, or you, or anyone would need to visit every church, temple, or synagogue in order to correctly asses them in toto. How absurd.
It is like there is some kind of emotional disconnect that prevents people from seeing a bigger picture.
Or, the converse -- that the anti-religionist is unable to see the bigger picture, having decided that religion is evil and therefore incapable of having positive virtues.
At this very moment, christian fundamentalists are taking a battering ram to individual rights in the United States. They were weaponized to take over government and the courts.
And it is a predictable swing after many decades of more progressive changes and court rulings that changed society in pretty radical ways. Indeed, on this very site, progressives have often celebrated with malice against the majority of the population and their acceptance of change. It's easy to ignore the reality when wishing away the opposition. But that sort of malevolence has driven my nation to the brink in recent years, so you'll have to excuse me if I reject your extremism sitting across the border from my country, not having to figure out how to work a path back to a nation from the fragments that lie about now.
They are preaching division and hate. Sometimes subtly, with their hate presented as love. Sometimes quite openly.
It is all too easy to find exactly the same division and hate preached here on JUB about anyone who in any way doesn't agree with the most extreme positions to the left. Neither sides' scorched earth campaigns is helpful. Both result in wider hate and misery.
Agreed.
This isn't about pretty buildings. Or art. Or music. Or some personal Kumbaya experience among fellow religious adherents in need of a shared community experience.
Yes, disparage comity, harmony, and peace. Pretend, or allege that only hate and smallness exists in religion when that is simply not true. And your return to implied ridicule of the personal inherently meaning unsound, or invalid goes to the very core of why you will not accept the devout. You condescend to anyone who has a personal connection with the Divine, through religion, as being deluded
because you believe them to be, not because you can prove such a thing any more than they can prove the supernatural.
As always, it is impossible to argue against religion with the religious.
And that's a good thing. Today, more than ever, Evangelicals do not seek out the irreligious to argue faith. If you choose not to believe, you are given that space to. That you want the 85% who do believe to pretend it does not guide their actions, just as your irreligion guides yours, is an uneven bias.
